> 








> > > 







3 





LOYALTY FOR ONE’S ALMA MATER, AS IT DAWNS 
ON THE FRESHMAN AND CONTINUES TO DAZZLE 
BEFORE THE EYES OF THE ALUMNI, IS, AFTER ALL, 
A PLIABLE SORT OF THING, AND ONLY UNDER THE 
INFLUENCE OF A LEADER NOT YET ARRIVED CAN 
IT BE MOLDED INTO A PERMANENT FORM WHICH 
ALONE WILL BE WORTHY OF THE NAME. LET SUCH 
A LEADER STEP FORWARD! HE MUST BE A HERO 
WHOSE MORAL COURAGE WILL OUTSHINE THE 
BRUTE STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE OF THE MOST 
LAUDED ATHLETE; HIS INFLUENCE MUST NOT ONLY 
COUNTERACT BUT ANNIHILATE THE INFLUENCE 
OF THE COACH; HIS MESSAGE MUST RING SO 
CLEARLY WITH TRUTH AND FAITH THAT THE 
CHEERS AND JEERS OF THE MAD MULTITUDE 
SHALL BE AS SILENCE IN COMPARISON. 


©C1A759624 


From “Football and Warfare " 
1917 — 

30 ^ _ 




Moloch (as the Scriptures tell us) was an idol made 
of copper and brass, which resembled a huge man 
holding his open hands before him. These hands were 
baked in fiery coals until they trembled horribly with 
heat. Parents would then throw their children into 
these glittering palms, where they were consumed and 
burned to death. Those who looked on made a loud 
noise with timbrels and cymbals and horns, to drown 
the pitiful cries of the infants. 

Yale’s Moloch is to be constructed from concrete 
and steel. The palms of its extended hands shall also 
form a gridiron. Young men shall be dashed upon it 
to risk their lives for the glory of their Alma Mater. 
Limbs may be broken, and skulls may be crushed, but 
mothers and fathers, sisters, classmates, alumni will 
cheer and shout and scream to drown the misery of 
their aching, mangled, bleeding sons and brothers. 


■from “Ten Years at Yale’’ (1915) 



The Snake-Dance of the Future 















WHY THE BULLDOG 

IS LOSING HIS GRIP 

»• 

A Secret Chapter in Yale Football History 

by 

GEORGE FREDERICK GUNDELFINGER 
(Author of “Ten Years at Yale”) 



THE NEW FRATERNITY 

Literature & Music 
SEWICKLEY, PENNSYLVANIA 



















G\Al58 

X3G8 




Copyright, 1923 
George F. Gundelfinger 






WHY THE BULLDOG 
IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


Any one who, during the last half dozen years, has been following, 
however unemotionally, the events in the world of sports, must know that 
Yale has met with defeat after defeat from the hands of Princeton and 
Harvard on the gridiron. The same person may also know that the 
author of the present article is the author of several books and pamphlets 
pertaining to the same university,—his Alma Mater,—but doubtlessly 
does not know that these publications and a carefully thought-out 
schedule and plan for their sale and distribution together with certain 
conforming elements of Fate are largely responsible for this appalling 
sequence of “disasters.’’ 

Even those Yale undergraduates among whom the literature has been 
circulated may not fully realize its astounding influence on Yale tradi¬ 
tions, since no small part of this influence, though effected through these 
very persons as mediums, has been produced subconsciously. On the 
other hand, while many of them have been conscious—voluntarily con¬ 
scious—of the part they themselves have played in bringing certain 
changes to pass, they can not possibly know either the extensiveness or 
the many details of the campaign as a whole. And for this reason I 
feel that this booklet will be almost as enlightening, though not so 
surprising, to those who know the secret as to those who do not. 

Furthermore the booklet will serve as a reliable though only a 
partial review of ten years of Yale football history, albeit certain phases 
of this history must be over-emphasized here to enable the reader to feel 
how firmly the Hand of Destiny has clasped my own from the very 
beginning, when I was unaware of it, down to the present, when I realize 
and confess the fact with gratitude, knowing full well that without it 
my individual efforts, strenuous and indefatigable though they were, 
would have been in vain. But since every possible effort has been made 








6 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GB1P 


by others to defy Destiny and to preclude this chapter from all other 
records of Yale football history, over-emphasis is here fully justified. 


1913-1914 

My first book— The Ice Lens —was published in February, 1913. 
This play by no means concentrates on the evils in football, although 
there is one scene which depicts (minus modesty) the dissipations which 
are believed to be the essential and the only commensurate means for 
celebrating a pigskin triumph and for revealing one’s loyalty to team 
and college. 

My resignation from Yale took effect in June, 1913, after I had 
spent ten years in residence as undergraduate, graduate student and 
instructor. My first book, appearing just before the resignation which 
would allow me greater freedom in criticism, served as a forecast of the 
absent treatment I was going to inflict upon my Alma Mater for a 
period equally as long. 

On October 3rd, 1913, the following lines appeared in an editorial 
of the Yale Alumni Weekly: “While there is an unimpeachable moral 
discipline in a prolonged series of athletic defeats, there comes a time 
in every such series when the soul of man recognizes that it has learned 
all it can learn of moral discipline without becoming too inconveniently 
spiritual, and yearns for a taste of the good old days of brutalizing 
victories—morally depraving and degenerating as they are.’’ 

Although the Yale Alumni Weekly had refused to mention The 
Ice Lens or accept an advertisement for it, I do not believe that these 
lines were intended to counteract any effect which my vivid descriptions 
of the “depraving and degenerating” consequences of victory may have 
had; for official Yale had decided to ignore the book completely—not 
even to refer to it indirectly. The object of this editorial was, no doubt, 
as the editorial itself stated, “to reverse the results of the last few 
seasons and bring an old-fashioned football victory to the final game in 
the old wooden amphitheatre at Yale Field.” 

The final big game in the old wooden amphitheatre with Princeton, 
although it resulted in a tie, was described as “a thrilling Yale come¬ 
back,” notwithstanding the out-of-town defeat at Cambridge the fol¬ 
lowing week. 

I do not wish to give The Ice Lens any credit whatever for this tie 
with Princeton or this defeat from Harvard. The book was a math- 



WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


H 

i 


ematician’s sudden plunge into and first attempt at literature. It was not 
taken seriously by the undergraduates who, despite the Yale Alumni 
lVeel?lv’s determination to suppress it, ridiculed the play through rhyme 
and satire in the Yale Record. 


1914-1915 

The old wooden amphitheatre was still used in the fall of 1914 for 
all football contests up to the Harvard Game, when the new Yale Bowl 
was thrown open to the public for the first time. The excitement was 
intense, for Yale had not won a victory over Harvard since the days 
of Ted Coy (1909). A victory over Princeton was, after all, not an 
unusual event. Nevertheless the fact that the Bulldog had just beaten 
the Tigers in their own lair at the Palmer Stadium before a crowd of 
40,000 spectators was looked upon as a sure indication that Yale under 
Coach Hinkey would at last smash the Haughton machine and christen 
her new seventy-thousand-capacity stadium with blood that was truly 
Crimson. But it was by far too Blue a day for Yale. As a Harvard, 
man put it, “Yale furnished the Bowl and Harvard provided the Punch 
—a 36 to 0 concoction—for a Crimson holiday. Harvard’s wonderful 
attack simply smothered Hinkey’s men, and Yale went down to the 
worst defeat in her football history.” And this the first game in her 
wonderful new amphitheatre! 

In the spring of 1915, I published my second book —Ten Years at 
Yale —which was sensationally taken up by all the big newspapers. 
While this book did not devote a special chapter to Athletics, it did, like 
The Ice Lens , deal with many other defects at Yale, incidentally taking 
the following flings at football: 

“A three-hundred-thousand-dollar Bowl (with four-hundred-thous¬ 
and dollars more for surroundings) and a ten-dollar prize for the boy 
who leads the Freshman Class in his studies!” (page 157.) 

“Moloch (as the Scriptures tell us) was an idol made of copper 
and brass, which resembled a huge man holding his hands before him. 
These hands were baked in fiery coals until they trembled horribly with 
heat. Parents would throw their children into these glittering palms, 
where they were consumed and burned to death. Those who looked 
on made a loud noise with timbrels and cymbals and horns, to drown the 
pitiful cries of the infants. 

“Yale’s Moloch is to be constructed from concrete and steel. The 




8 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


palms of its extended hands shall also form a gridiron. Young men 
shall be dashed upon it to risk their lives for the glory of their Alma 
Mater. Limbs may be broken, and skulls may be crushed, but mothers 
and fathers, sisters, classmates, alumni will cheer and shout and scream 
to drown the misery of their aching, mangled, bleeding sons and 
brothers.” (page 147.) 

Strong as these words were, there were other indictments in Ten 
Years at Yale which made them appear pale in comparison; and again 
I ask that this second book be considered as having little effect on the 
outcome of the football games the next fall. Its blows were too many 
and too varied to accomplish immediate results; “kaleidoscopic” was 
the word used to describe them by one critic. The Yale News declined 
to advertise the book and referred to the author as “a delightful humor¬ 
ist and a staunch member of the Ananias Club.” The Alumni Weekly 
did not even include it in the Bibliography of Yale Graduates published 
for the first time that year. 


19 15-1916 

Hinkey was retained as Head Coach, but the football season of 
1915, played entirely in the new Bowl, was even more disheartening. 
Four contests with smaller colleges had been lost before the Princeton 
Game, which, though it resulted in a Yale triumph, was not the triumph 
Yale was so anxiously awaiting—in vain; for a week later at Cam¬ 
bridge, the “Closing Act of the Most Disastrous Yale Football Season 
on Record” brought forth the score: Harvard 41—Yale 0. “Yale’s 
Worst Defeat.” 

The time had come when Yale could stand it no longer. The 
Alumni Weekly began a series of articles on Yale football history, 
publishing the pictures and accomplishments of her great gridiron heroes 
of the Past. She flew to her traditions! A Yale pageant, celebrating 
the 200th anniversary of the removal of Yale College from Saybrook 
to New Haven, was planned for presentation in the Bowl itself as the 
opening event of the college year 1916-1917 to wash away the dis¬ 
graceful stain which Harvard had put there on the very day of its 
dedication in 1914 and which she had recalled vividly with the even 
blacker ignominy on her home field in 1915. Indeed Yale could not 
even wait until the fall of 1916 to drive the offensive Harvard odor 
from her great Bowl, so she planned the production of a German opera 



WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


9 


there in the spring of 1916. Die Walkyre, most warlike of all Wag¬ 
ner’s music-dramas, was selected, the eight fighting daughters of Wotan, 
led by the shrieking Brunhilde, probably serving to inspire the eleven 
Sons of Eli who were to defend the Bowl in November when it would 
be visited a second time by Yale’s infamous enemy. 


1916-1917 

The Pageant of 1916 with its Wooden Spoon Prom, Death Dance 
of the Quinnipiacs, Arrival of John Davenport, Colonial Maypole, 
Demand of the Keys to the Powder House, Entry of Washington, 
British Invasion of New Haven, Martyrdom of Nathan Hale, Town 
and Gown Riots, and Burial of Euclid—all these traditions enacted in 
the Bowl by students, faculty and townspeople of New Haven—served 
to dispel the gloom occasioned on the day of its baptism and to admit 
the sunshine which was to illuminate the beginning of a new era in Yale 
football under the coaching of “Tad” Jones, Yale quarterback in 
1908, fresh from three successive and highly successful seasons at 
Exeter. To have retained Coach Hinkey would have meant the recol¬ 
lection of those fatal 36-0 and 41-0 scores under his regime—scores 
which the Pageant had driven far back into Yale’s unconscious mind 
and which would be nailed there forever, it was hoped, by this youthful 
Siegfried who had been chosen to slay the Crimson Dragon. Under 
“Tad” Jones’ first year at coaching, a Yale team captained by “Cupid” 
Black won all the preliminary games save one (Jones’ first defeat in four 
years) and then not only vanquished Princeton (who was unable to 
score) but also accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of beating 
Harvard. Yale football had indeed come back from its “slough of 
despond”—as Walter Camp put it. “It is no hyperbole,” claimed the 
Yale Alumni Weekly , “to say that Jones has worked wonders for Yale 
football in the short time he has been in charge.” 

“Tad” Jones was the man of the hour! 

In connection with the Pageant of 1916, the Yale University Press 
published several beautiful books also dealing with Yale traditions. But 
two books published elsewhere at this time were of greater interest 
because they dealt chiefly with the gridiron. In November, when “Tad” 
Jones was accomplishing the impossible, there appeared Football Days 
by “Big Bill” Edwards, famous Princeton player. This volume is to 
football what Bernhardi’s is to war and militarism. It was widely 


10 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


read, and the spirit of it was probably a great help to Jones in his 
triumph at New Haven in that it must have wiped out even the most 
insignificant influence of my earlier publications. The other book, pub¬ 
lished by a curious coincidence in the very same month, was my third 
attack on Yale, entitled The New Fraternity —a novel in which the 
name Yale is never mentioned but in which every page reflects the Yale 
atmosphere. The New Fraternity differs from my earlier attacks in 
that it depicts football as the root of many evils. Its nature is the exact 
opposite of Football Days which sings of the glories of the gridiron. - 
The very first chapter of The New Fraternity is a severe flogging for 
the Bulldog: 

“The fog was gathering thickly along the western horizon, and 
through it the upper zone of the setting sun was still visible, emitting a 
crimson glow, which, at lengthening intervals, seemed to brighten per¬ 
ceptibly, as if fanned by a wandering breeze, and then become duller 
than before. One might almost imagine it to be a human heart which 
some warrior, athirst for blood and fame, had torn from the bosom of 
his victim and tossed into this sluggish, muddy, snake-haunted stream, 
where its pulsations grew more and more feeble and irregular as it sank 
lower and lower in the cold, lifeless water. 

“The game was over and won. It was the greatest victory in the 
history of the university, and the credit went to one man—Tom Kuhler. 
He did all the brilliant playing, made the long runs and the timely 
tackles. He was the star of the afternoon, the hero, the king, the god. 
And yet a merciless god—for, although he had sent the opposing team 
to bitter defeat, he had to twist their ribs and crack their skulls to do 
so; there was scarcely a man who escaped being injured in some way 
or other. 

“During the first quarter, one player was carried off the field; his 
neck had been broken. He was, in fact, the only man considered as 
Kuhler’s equal or superior—the only man who really stood in Kuhler’s 
way, and Kuhler himself had connived in advance with his squad to 
remove him from the gridiron as soon as possible. 

“When the fame of a great university lies at stake, human suffering 
and death itself are disregarded. The main thing is the glory of the 
Alma Mater. Let us unfurl her flag to the eyes of the populace that 
she might lure the youth of the nation into her ranks. What difference 
does it make if we murder a man or two, as long as we win the support 
of a thousand others by doing so! 

“And while that score was being flashed across the continent, 
and while the graduates of the future were reading the thrilling 






WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


11 


accounts of the contest, the dying man was drawing his last breath.” 

The snake-dance of victory is then described. 

“There was perhaps only one student of the university absent from 
this spectacular pageant. He remained in his seat in the last row at the 
top of the East Stand .... His thoughts were with the dying 
student, and it was to this boy alone that the sinking sun became symbolic 
of the final throbs of a human heart.” 

The banquet at the training-table in celebration of the victory is 
described in the second chapter, and Kuhler, in his speech, refers to the 

editorial in the Yale Alumni Weekly: “What ya want ’a do is 

ta give football all yer attention. Concentrate yer efforts on that. 
Muscle! Mountains ove it! Gray matter don’t matter. Good 

animals—that’s w’at we want—that’s w’at we need. Football 

ain’t a game fur babies, but that’s w’at the’re tryin’ ta make out 
ove it. I want ya all ta work hard an’ save the game an’ restore it. 
Don’t become too inconveniently spir’tu’l. I want ya ta yearn 
again fur the good old days of brutalizin’ vict’ries, as our encour¬ 
agin’ Alumni Weekly puts it.” 

Then come the intensely realistic descriptions of the events which 
followed the brutalizing victory—“morally depraving and degenerating 
as they are.” 

“A university! A place for learning! A thoroughly civilized 
community! This is the type of man you graduate. This is the outcome 
of the great football contests on which your reputation is founded. It 
is for the encouragement of this barbaric sport that you erect your million- 
dollar stadiums. Wonderful Football. Glorious Football! Noble 
Football! Onward! Onward, thou frenzied Serpent of Victory! 
Onward, leaving injury, death, crime, murder and ruin in thy path!” 

But The Nerv Fraternity does not end here; in fact, it only begins 
then to show up the other far more terrible influence of pigskin on the 
undergraduates of our colleges and universities. But enough has been 
printed to acquaint the reader with the nature of the book as compared 
with Football Days. 

Review copies of The Nerv Fraternity sent out to the press were 
practically ignored, although the book by the same author which had 
preceded it— Ten Years at Yale —was given the utmost publicity by 
the bigger newspapers. The reason for this change was obvious. Imme¬ 
diately following the sensation created by Ten Years at Yale , an 
honorary degree was conferred by that university on Melville E. Stone, 
President of the Associated Press. 

That propaganda was everywhere working to suppress the publica- 



12 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


tion of The New Fraternity was evident from the fact that twenty well- 
known American publishing houses had rejected the manuscript, the 
reason for rejection, as certain letters revealed, not being that it was 
uninteresting stuff. This meant, however, that at least twenty persons 
had read it, and it is safe to assume that at least one of the twenty was 
a Yale alumnus, since Yale is well represented in Publishing throughout 
the United States. I am indeed convinced that a large university can 
have a scheme of representation which may be far more effective than 
a German spy-system. The nature of my novel was, no doubt, imme¬ 
diately flashed to New Haven and elsewhere, which explains why my 
efforts to place it on sale (after I had published it myself) were at first 
futile. I knew, from experience, that it would be even more futile to 
attempt advertising it in Yale papers. The only remaining means for 
bringing it out was to mail cards to individuals. With these I deluged 
both the Yale faculty and the undergraduates. These cards in no way 
indicated that the book was an attack on football, but that fact must 
have been let out and spread by those who had read the manuscript, and 
this information together with “Tad” Jones’ triumph was successful in 
establishing a 1 00 per cent resistance—for I did not receive a single 
response to my announcements. 

The result of all this was that I felt I had written a book which was 
certainly going to do things—if only I could get the right persons started 
in reading it. 

As a last resort I began to send out complimentary copies with the 
hope that they would be devoured mentally rather than physically. One 
was mailed to each member of the Yale Corporation; a few of them 
acknowledged the receipt of the book with no further remarks whatever. 
About twenty copies were mailed to Yale administrators and faculty; 
I received only one acknowledgement, which, however, included the 
opinion that there were real evils in university life and expressed the hope 
that my novel would help to correct them. (Later I published this 
“opinion” and “hope,” with the result that the indignant professor 
requested that he “never again be quoted as favorably inclined to Mr. 
Gundelfinger’s books about Yale.”) A copy was mailed to each mem¬ 
ber of the Yale Student Council; I received but one acknowledgement, 
and this included the opinion that the book contained a moral lesson 
worth remembering. I mailed a goodly number to individual students 
in fraternities and dormitories with impersonal inscriptions to the effect 
that they were to be passed along after they had been read. Some of 
these were probably confiscated; but I have good reasons to believe 
that others were read by more than one person. 



WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 13 

For I had at last succeeded in planting some seeds a few of which 
had sprouted though very slightly and under intense opposition. In the 
winter of 1916-17 a few direct orders came in from the faculty and 
undergraduates at New Haven, and the Yale Co-operative Store and 
the Brick Row Print And Book Shop began to obtain very small con¬ 
signments indirectly through New York jobbers. 

It was the Beginning! 


1917- 1918 

During my ten years residence at Yale, I had had ample time to 
observe and study the influence of football on the academic world, and 
when I returned home my feelings toward it were very similar to Lin¬ 
coln’s feeling toward Slavery when he returned from the South: “If 
ever I get a chance to hit that thing, I’ll hit it hard.” The little blows 
which I had dealt in my earlier books (one completed at Yale and the 
other largely under way when I left there) were mild compared with 
those in The Nexv Fraternity, which though purely fictitious in spots 
abounds in descriptions of after-triumph lawlessness which are not mere 
products of the imagination. The editorial, which I had read in solitude 
while the Fall term (1913) was opening at Yale in my absence, was 
the key which unlocked my memory and the prong which drove me to 
record the shameful scenes in my novel. And no other thing did more 
than that editorial to strengthen my determination to prevent “brutalizing, 
morally depraving and degenerating victories” in the future and to usher 
in “a prolonged series of athletic defeats” which would result in moral 
discipline and lead to an intellectual renaissance. It goes without saying 
that Yale’s gridiron victories of 1916 were at first a big disappointment 
to me. 

But the disappointment was of short duration. In fact, I soon saw 
that the triumph of “Tad” Jones was not to be considered as a disap¬ 
pointment at all but a revelation of what Jones could really do as com¬ 
pared with Hinkey—the power against which I could truly measure 
the strength of the influence of my writings. But Fate also dealt her 
masterful stroke at this time. The gridiron victories of 1916 were no 
sooner won, it seemed, when the United States entered the World War, 
“Tad” Jones himself resigning as coach to work for the Government 
and all but one of the twenty-two “Y” men of his famous varsity squad 
enlisting in the Service—all of which served to leave Yale football 



14 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


unguarded and to make my chance to “hit it hard’’ the more supreme. 
However forcibly I had written against the game in The New Fraternity, 
I realized that I had to deal a still more powerful blow—and from a 
different angle entirely; and I saw immediately this very angle which 
Destiny had placed at my command. 

Yale of course had been preparing for war all along. She had 
opened a military camp at Niantic, Connecticut, in the summer of 1916; 
and the R. O. T. C. was well under way in the fall. The anti-German 
sentiment in this country was growing more and more bitter; in the spring 
of 1916 the idea of presenting Wagnerian opera in the Yale Bowl was 
resented by many alumni, a number of whom had already enlisted and 
were sending letters from the other side which were published in the 
Alumni Weekly to arouse the graduates at home. 

Early in the summer of 1917, it was hinted that Yale, Harvard 
and Princeton would cancel the big games owing to the depletion of 
their football squads through enlistment. Under the pressure of war 
many activities of the collegiate world hung in the balance, but the 
suspension of football seemed to give writers most concern—in partic¬ 
ular, sporting editors. Fearing that the action of the “Big Three’’ 
might become general, the newspapers began publishing article after 
article in which football was compared to war and was proved to be 
the best preparation for the soldier. 

I knew the spirit for war was not so strong among American under¬ 
graduates as the college and daily press tried to have us believe. I 
knew that the students would resent compulsory military training. To 
watch one’s classmates “slaughtering” and being “slaughtered” on the 
gridiron was one thing—and even a thing of joy! But to prepare one’s 
self for slaughtering and for being slaughtered was a matter of a quite 
different color, however gloriously others were praising such deeds and 
sacrifices. To transform this loathing for war into a subsequent loathing 
for football became my whole-hearted aim. I proceeded to write my 
essay Football and Warfare in which I used statistics and authoritative 
quotations to make the gridiron appear almost as bloody and vicious as 
the battlefield, and I reprinted from a radical periodical the extremely 
repulsive commands of a victory-at-any-price officer at one of our national 
cantonments, claiming that his words were nothing more than the inten¬ 
sified orders of a winning-mad football coach. I reprinted the analogies 
between football and warfare from the daily papers, repeating 
that such tactics were indeed necessary in winning a battle against 
equally insane opponents, but I also reversed the application and 
showed that for this very reason football had no legitimate place in 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


15 


the scheme of education. I suggested its abolition after the War. 

The essay was printed on yellow paper in pamphlet-form, and the 
name of the publishers given as The New Fraternity. Guided by earlier 
experience, I did not send out circulars about it in advance; I gave no 
man time to decide whether or not he should order a copy—the first 
thing he got was the pamphlet itself, free of charge. Something told me 
these pamphlets would not go into wastebaskets before they were read, 
although they might go there afterwards not because of hatred for what 
I had written but because of the fear of having such “yellow” literature 
discovered on one’s person. 

I succeeded in saturating undergraduate Yale and its faculty with 
this essay, in sending a copy to each member of the Yale Corporation, 
to each member of the Yale Alumni Advisory Board, to each Board of 
Athletic Control at many colleges and preparatory schools and high 
schools in the United States—and then! Football and Warfare was 
suppressed by the Department of Justice! 

A headmaster at a preparatory school in California upon receiving 
and reading his copy, immediately informed the officials at Washington 
who notified the officers at Pittsburgh, to whom it was requested that all 
New Fraternity publications be sent for inspection, which request was 
complied with—with The New Fraternity's request that it be informed 
as to which of its publications should no longer be sent through the 
United States mails. Since there was no answer whatever to this latter 
request, I continued after a reasonable time to mail all other literature 
except Football and Warfare; and when, after a few months, the reply 
was still wanting (and because I was still wanting to mail the “yellow” 
pamphlet to a few persons) I took the liberty to mail Football and 
Warfare also. The few persons happened to be Yale men. Almost 
immediately I heard from the Department of Justice at Pittsburgh again 
and was asked this time to appear in person. I was cross-examined by 
two men—Mr. A. who was very human and liberal and Mr. B. who 
seemed almost as ferocious as the cantonment officer I had quoted in my 
essay. Mr. B.—I honestly believe—wanted to send me to Leaven¬ 
worth and put me in a cell with Debs. He read a part of my essay 
three times aloud in an attempt to prove that I was trying to encourage 
young men to evade the draft, and he read it so dramatically the third 
time that he almost succeeded in making a slacker of the author himself. 
I admitted of course that the pamphlet could be so interpreted but that 
such an interpretation had not been my intention. I had a hard time 
convincing Mr. B. that I was not trying to prevent the United States 
from winning the War and that I was pointing out the atrocious means 


16 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


that were necessary to win a war only with the hope that the analogy 
would prevent the unnecessary victories in football after the War was 
won. Mr. A. said that he had seen certain pictures on the screen, 
shown every afternoon and night, that would do far more to discourage 
young men from enlisting. This seemed to soften Mr. B’s heart, for the 
trip to Kansas did not materialize, and I left the scene of the trial prom¬ 
ising to keep my pamphlet out of the mails and feeling that I had 
written “the hard hit” which was going to bring results after the War — 
if it had not already done so. 

There were other football enthusiasts who “misunderstood” my 
pamphlet. I received a direct communication from an attorney in Mis¬ 
souri who returned a copy of Football and Warfare all marked up and 
accompanied by a letter, stating: “You are as bad as any German 
propagandist we have in this country, and the better that such should 
meet the fate that we, in the West, wish and pray for all but true 
Americans: not internment but the firing squad!” 

The pamphlets which got through the mails before suppression set in 
had an astounding effect on the Yale student-body, which was a glorious 
promise of what the others would do later at a time when the student 
mind would be even more receptive. 

Owing to the enlistment of all “Y” men, there was of course no 
varsity team in the fall of 1917. Nevertheless even though the big 
intercollegiate games had been canceled, Yale tried to keep her football- 
spirit alive through the formation of class teams for intramural contests; 
but that spirit was completely smothered by Football and Warfare. 
“Shorn of their promising players and supported by little or no interest 
on the part of the college, the class teams,” said the Yale Daily News , 
“passed gradually out of existence.” 

The influence of the pamphlet on the Freshman Class was reflected 
in the following editorial: “It is doubtless true that the Sheff Freshmen 
carry comparatively heavy schedules and that many of them are busy 
with military or naval training. But these facts in themselves are not 
sufficient to account for the peculiar apathy in which 1 920 seems to be 
enthralled. At a recent call for candidates for Football Managership 
competitions, only four men responded, the bare minimum from which an 
election could be held.” And in the next issue the News continued to 
lament: “For the first time in the history of the university, it has been 
necessary to give a Freshman Class an extra day to nominate its quota 
of football managers.” 

But most marked of all was the anaesthesia of the Baby Bulldog; 
for Freshman football, with certain restrictions, was still in existence. 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


17 


I had been particularly careful to see that each of the Freshman Eleven 
had received a pamphlet by first-class mail. The Freshman Team under 
Captain Acosta had already defeated Andover 41-0, Exeter 20-0 and 
Harvard 1 4-0, had in all scored 82 points to their opponents’ 7. Then, 
after having read Football and Warfare, they were defeated by Prince¬ 
ton—a fact which was all the more significant when one considered that 
the Harvard freshmen (defeated by Yale) had defeated this same 
Princeton team 24-0. 

And note the changing editorial policy of the Yale Alumni Weekly 
(November 16th, 1917): “There can be no question that intercol¬ 
legiate football, as it had come in late years to be organized on a large 
scale for championship public spectacles, was fast becoming a serious 
interference with college work and a commercialized business of large 
proportions that had no place in college life . . . Will Yale, 

then, have the courage to resume Varsity football next year or the year 
after, whenever it becomes a possibility, upon a basis similar to that 
which has proved so salutary to the Freshman Team? Will Yale be 
willing at least to help lead the way to purer amateurism and less of the 
spirit of professionalism, to more of a sensible economy in keeping with 
the purpose of a University and less of the extravagance smacking of 
commercialism, to less of the trumped-up public spectacle with its hero- 
worship and other inevitable evils and more of the college sport for the 
sake of college sport as such? We cannot think too hard and too often 
upon these things.” 

Think of how the Bowl with its seating-capacity of 70,000 must, 
despite its construction of steel and concrete, have collapsed temporarily 
under such a blow! But it probably recovered when the Yale News, 
in its last issue of the college year, looking forward to the opening of 
the university in the fall, headed its editorial: A Return TO THE 
Bowl!” 


1918-1919 

But the “return to the Bowl” did not materialize. 

When the term opened in the fall of 1918, the Government had 
taken charge of all American colleges and universities and established 
the Students’ Army Training Corps. Not only Yale officials but the 
officials at Washington decreed that all intercollegiate football games 
were to be abandoned. I am inclined to believe that this action on the 


18 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GEIP 


part of the Government was due, in large part, to the policy of Yale, 
Harvard and Princeton in the fall of 1917, intensified to the degree that 
likewise not only Freshman teams for outside games but also class teams 
for intramural contests were to be prohibited from interfering with mil¬ 
itary training. Here again the Government must have noted the lack 
of interest in the Yale football class teams in 191 7—an apathy due 
almost entirely to the distribution of Football and Warfare and The 
New Fraternity. Indeed it is not going too far to claim that the novel, 
appearing immediately after the Yale intercollegiate victories of 1916, 
must have disgusted some of “Tad” Jones’ players and influenced them 
subconsciously to enter the Greater Game. The more deeply one delves 
into this matter, the more clearly one understands why football was 
abolished temporarily not only at Yale but at all American colleges. 
The War, of course, delivered the direct blow; but there had been many 
other local blows which led up to it. 

The prohibition of intercollegiate gridiron activities was indeed my 
dream, but I would never have believed that it could come true so sud¬ 
denly. After all, the suppression of my pamphlet was entirely unneces¬ 
sary by the Department of justice in the light of the fact that the Gov¬ 
ernment itself had suppressed football, which was the ultimate purpose 
for which the pamphlet had been printed, and, curiously enough, in the 
accomplishment of which the pamphlet had indirectly influenced the 
Government itself. 

The prohibition of intercollegiate football was of course only a tem¬ 
porary measure. Nevertheless it was bound to affect the sport when 
the latter would be resumed. The Yale Alumni Weekly hinted at this 
in its issue of October 14th, 1918: “The supreme demand of the 
moment touching our American colleges—that of preparing for army 
and navy service at the earliest possible moment the young men matric¬ 
ulated at our institutions of higher learning or sent there for special 
training—transcends the erstwhile large importance of intercollegiate 
athletic schedules, defeat-proof coaches and training tables. Whether 
these items, of a day now seemingly far off in the past, go or stay when 
readjustment comes. 

But the significant thing was not so much the stroke of Fate which 
brought my dream to pass temporarily but the further conformity of Fate 
in dealing the blow to football only—the only college sport that I 
longed to see disabled to the degree that it disabled its players; for most 
other sports seem to me to be constructive in nature and devoid of 
morbidness. Nothing pleased me more than that the Armistice was 
announced just as the time usually allotted to the football season was 



WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


19 


about up, so that other sports could be resumed with no interference 
whatever through Federal rulings. 

As soon as the XYar was declared ended, Yale took up the problem 
of Reorganization. Again I saw my opportunity and published, in early 
December, 1919, a handbill entitled Some Suggestions for the Post- 
Bellum Reconstruction of Yale University , on which my ideas in Foot¬ 
ball and Warfare were crystallized and brought afresh to influence 
student opinion and the action of authorities. Under the sub-title 
“Athletics,” I printed the following suggestions: 

“The abolition of all sports which transform students into Huns, 
brutalizing and mutilating them for the sake of domination, commer¬ 
cialism and publicity. The abolition of all sports which aim to produce 
the abnormal physiques of those short-lived freaks who should be con¬ 
cealed in the side-show of a circus, rather than displayed on the campus 
of a college. The introduction and permanent establishment of a non¬ 
military system of athletics for all students which will result in that health¬ 
ful physical development and humane discipline which are necessary 
to stimulate and sustain mental activity—a system which will help bring 
about the gradual expansion of the mind rather than a sudden concussion 
of the brain.” 

Thousands of copies of this handbill were circulated by mail among 
the students and faculty of Yale. 

Now note the editorial in the Yale Alumni Weekly (December 
20th, 1918): “There are the best reasons why the annual session of 
the National Collegiate Athletic Association in New York City on the 
twenty-seventh of this month should be a notable meeting. While the 
war was making its demands upon the best manhood of the colleges and 
calling a halt on intercollegiate athletics, those who had almost despaired 
of reforming intercollegiate athletics saw their golden opportunity ahead 
and talked the language of the optimist. That opportunity has arrived 
Real Sport for the greatest possible number. That will mean 
an end to grooming particular stars and lavishing money on picked men.” 

And observe the “Keynote of the Conference” mentioned in the 
above editorial—the Chief Resolution which was published in all the 
daily papers: “Athletics and Physical Training for the Student-Body 
as a Whole!” Everything from secret practice to long trips was dis¬ 
cussed at this national meeting, and it looked as though everything was 
going to be abolished. One newspaper went so far as to publish the 
headline: “Collegiate Coaches to Become a Thing of the Past!” 

But the most interesting feature of this Conference, as far as the 
future of Yale was concerned, was pointed out unconsciously by the 



20 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


Yale Daily News (January 6th, 1919): “The whole tener of the 
N. C. A. A. meeting is summed up in a paper by Dean J. R. Angell of 
the University of Chicago, which was read at the meeting and which 
heartily denounced the professional coach, training tables and the 
spectacular aspect of the large football games. He even compared these 
great games to the circus, the prize fight and gladiatorial combat.” Here 
surely was the fore-going shadow of a forth-coming event. 

It is hardly necessary to point out the similarity—even the use of 
identical words—between the above passages and the Suggestions on 
the handbill. 

The dailies of Yale, Harvard and Princeton seemed rather nervous 
during those days. Fearing that football might be prohibited per¬ 
manently, they also called a conference and published their resolutions, 
claiming that although inter-class and intramural athletics for all students 
should be encouraged for placing a check upon the previous excesses and 
over-emphasis of varsity athletics, nevertheless “successful, well-trained 
varsity teams were prerequisite and contributions to a wide general 
interest and participation in athletics.” In this attitude they were backed 
by Walter Camp, whose “daily dozen,” by the way, are participated 
in by thousands without prerequisite varsity teams. 

But there was far more fear than logic in these resolutions. That 
well-trained varsity squads are necessary for a general participation in 
athletics has yet to be proved; that they are not sufficient to stimulate 
such participation has already been proved by Yale’s general (?) 
participation in athletics in the past. Such teams have, it is true, always 
interested the student-body in athletics as far as the discussion of scores 
and players is concerned, but to say that they have aroused the general 
student-body to participate in athletics for their own health is nonsense 
and falsehood. They have drawn in many a candidate who was seek¬ 
ing glory and publicity, but few who were desiring a development of 
physique for a purpose other than display or commercialism. The only 
thing in which such teams have led the general student-body to partic¬ 
ipate is the “rah! rah! rah!” and that is far more injurious to the throat 
than the accompanying inhalations of fresh air are beneficial. It is not 
necessary to shout one’s head off in order to admit the great out-of-doors 
into one’s lungs. 

But these conferences did lead to a general discussion of athletics 
whether the resolutions were radical or conservative; and something has 
been accomplished when people begin discussions. In the midst of all 
this discussion, I made a special effort to keep my books alive. By this 
time they had been read at many other universities, colleges and prepar- 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


21 


atory schools, and I published, on attractive circulars, the endorsements 
of certain well-known persons in the educational world who did not 
change their opinions just because they were put in print. Notable 
among these endorsements was that of Professor George Elliott Howard 
of the University of Nebraska, former president of the American 
Sociological Society, who wrote: “You have delivered a powerful and 
much needed message. In my judgment you have courageously attacked 
the chief evils in American college life. Football, by fostering vicious 
habits and wrong ideals, is lowering the standard of higher education. 
As conditions now are in our universities, the chief tributes of “glory” 
and prestige go to men like Kuhler (character in The Nerv Fraternity) 
whose merits can only be measured by the pound.” I had this printed 
on a little folder together with an editorial from a liberal publication 
by the Yale Club of Boston, explaining what loyalty to one’s college 
really meant. I kept Yale well fed with these circulars on which I 
received permission to use the for-sale-at stamp of the Yale Co-operative 
Store. I issued a special Reconstruction Edition of my first book The 
Ice Lens. Undergraduate Yale at last became sufficiently interested in 
my ideas so that I no longer had to send out free copies of my books, the 
Yale Co-operative Store keeping itself well-stocked all the time. 

Following a winter of free discussion of athletic affairs, there came 
a revolution of the Yale athletic scheme in the spring of 1919, in which 
“athletics for all” was the predominant factor. A large club house for 
the use of all students was proposed. The Board of Athletic Control 
underwent various changes in personnel. Professor Mendell replacing 
Professor Corwin as Chairman. A University Department of Athletics 
was organized, and Dr. Albert H. Sharpe was summoned from Cornell 
as Director. 

And yet with all these big changes for that which would be new 
and undeniably better, we find the old traditional idea unwilling to die. 
The Yale Nervs (May 3rd, 1919), referring to the Banquet at which 
Director Sharpe was guest of honor, said: “Last night was the biggest 
night of its kind since the evening of November 25th, 1916. Dr. Sharpe 
came and saw and conquered . . . But there was other cause 

to shout. Yale won against both Harvard and Princeton last^ night; 
but the frog chorus rent the sky in anticipation of other victories.” The 
victory referred to was that in the Yale-Harvard-Princeton triangular 
debate on Prohibition, which, by the way, is not in favor of “Bowls”— 
in particular, when they serve us with a .56-0 concoction of a decidedly 


Crimson flavor. 

In concluding 


the college year 1918-1919, I shall quote a very 


22 WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 

similar editorial from the Commencement number of the Yale Alumni 
Weekly: 

“There has been no intercollegiate Varsity Football Game since the 
fall of 1916, when Yale beat both Harvard and Princeton. But it 
was not an inappropriate ending to the most remarkable year in Yale’s 
History capped by the most remarkable of Yale’s commencements that 
Yale should be able to claim victories over both Princeton and Harvard 
in every major-sport engaged in during the year 1918-1919—track, 
crew and baseball. Add to this a like victory in debating and minor 
sports. The omens of the year 1919!’’ 

But my reader now knows only too well that these victories in good 
activities were not good omens for the victories Yale was craving in a 
sport that was doomed—the victories which Destiny, for good reasons, 
would not grant her. 


1919- 1920 

Football Squad Largest in the History of the University 

—116 Men Out For Team! 

This headline appeared in the first issue of the Yale News in the 
fall of 1919. The paper went on to say that the nucleus of the team 
consisted of five “Y” men of the victorious Varsity of 1916, now back 
from service. The renewed enthusiasm in football was reflected in the 
editorial: “Entranced by the glamour formerly attending it as dean 

among college sports, football, after a three year lapse, resumes the 
center of the Yale athletic stage. That it has lost none of its old-time 
popularity was evident at last Saturday’s practice at which over 2,000 
spectators were present.’’ 

The team, coached by Director Sharpe himself, lost but one of the 
early games and the score of that closely fought contest was 5-3 with 
Boston College as the victor. In the other five games preceding those 
with Princeton and Harvard, only one of the defeated teams was able 
to score. It was little wonder that the Yale News after the last prelim¬ 
inary victory (Yale 14—Brown 0) said: “There exists among the 
team’s supporters a definite spirit of optimism.” 

But it is well known that no matter how successful a Yale team has 
been in meeting the opposing teams of every other college, the football 
season is regarded as a failure (and even a disgrace by some) if that 
team is defeated by Princeton and Harvard—or even by Harvard alone. 




WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


Hence the traditional schedule always reserves these classic games for 
the close of the season, the conflict with Harvard invariably coming last. 
The earlier games are considered mere practice. “Our chief interest, 
after all, in preliminary matches,” the Yale News once claimed, “is the 
opportunity afforded to measure our strength and to estimate the possi¬ 
bilities of beating Harvard. Of course Princeton must always be 
considered. But it is necessary to take it for granted that the Princeton 
Game is a hurdle that we must jump over successfully before coming to 
the Harvard Game.” And elsewhere I have observed that the Nervs 
does not even regard the preliminary games as a part of the football 
season, referring to them as “pre-season” games. 

The reformer then who is striving to crush Yale football-spirit is 
striving in vain if he begins his open propaganda in October. If he brings 
about a Yale defeat in a “pre-season” game, it will have little or no 
effect, and his literature will have lost its freshness of attack by the time 
the classics are about to be staged. Furthermore if “pre-season” games 
are allowed to proceed undisturbed, the list of winning scores preceding 
the classic games makes disaster in these all the more effective. The 
psychological “moment” to mail a dynamic pamphlet is after the last 
preliminary game, at the beginning of the week which terminates in a 
clash with the Tigers. 

While my books had been read by Yale undergraduates during the 
spring of 1919, my pamphlet Football and Warfare —the real bomb 
which shattered the morale of the freshmen and the various class teams 
in 1917—had (owing to suppression by the Department of Justice) 
not been distributed for two years. During that interval a number of 
the students who had received it had graduated, and those who should 
have graduated but were now back to make up the work they had lost 
through enlistment had not received copies. If there were some under¬ 
graduates who had saved their pamphlets for two years, they would have 
run the risk of becoming very unpopular (to say the least) if they had 
shown them during so glorious a “pre-season.” The pamphlet would 
have been entirely novel to all freshmen and sophomores. 

As to the Varsity Team itself, the five members of “Tad” Jones’ 
triumphant team of 1916 who served as a nucleus had, of course, not 
received copies, and those members of the Freshman Team of 1917 who 
had now advanced to Varsity rank, had, no doubt, destroyed and did 
not care to talk about the little “yellow” demons who had brought 
about their downfall. 

Apparently then, the pamphlet would have all the freshness of attack 
that it had in 1917. Indeed, it would now be even more effective; for 


24 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


in 1917, the students were only preparing for military service and now 
many of them had actually fought at the front. The resistance to 
military training, because I had compared football to warfare, made the 
student-body only luke-warm at most in its enthusiasm for the gridiron 
sport; but the pamphlet was bound to have a more crushing effect on the 
football-spirit of those to whom it would recall all the horrors of actual 
Warfare which they themselves had seen and experienced. 

The large supply of pamphlets which I had printed in 1917 was not 
very materially lessened by those which I had mailed before the essay 
was suppressed. All through the War this supply lay in safety, not 
brooding over and being consumed by the frustration of their falsely 
construed attempt to prevent the United States from winning the War, 
but dreaming about and anxiously awaiting the accomplishment of their 
real and original purpose: “a prolonged series of athletic defeats.” 

A cloud of them went into the mails after the Brown Game, and 
the cloud burst in New Haven on Monday morning, November 1 Oth, 
1919. The Yale News of that date informed me later that on that day 
‘‘the University Football Team for the first time of the year did not 
report for practice;” so its members had ample time to do a little reading. 
The effect of the cloud-burst was tremendous. The next morning 
(Tuesday, November 1 1th) the News announced that ‘‘the first Foot¬ 
ball rally since 1916” would take place on Wednesday night and that 
Captain Callahan, Coaches Sharpe, Cates, Brides and Bull and Pro¬ 
fessor Abbott would address the parade that would be led by all the 
“Y” men in the University. Captain ‘‘Cupid” Black of the Great 
Year 1916 came to New Haven for the occasion, and ‘‘Tad” Jones 
would probably have been telegraphed for could he have arrived in time 
from Seattle. The News editorial on the day of the rally said: ‘‘Of 
course every Yale man will be on the campus at 7. The football rally 
will be 100% attended anyway. Nobody is going to attend the theater 
tonight, for instance.” 

On Thursday, November 13th, a half-page of the News was 
utilized to call the attention of all students to a Song Night at Commons, 
Yale’s gigantic Dining Hall. In letters an inch high: ‘‘Whip it into 
them—Li-ine! It’s up to the Football Squad—but it’s up to You, 
too!” The famous Undertaker Song was a particular feature. There 
was another Song Night on Friday. 

On Friday, November 14th, the News insisted that all students 
march to and cheer at the last practice. Editorial: ‘‘To The Bowl! 
—Every man who attended Wednesday Night’s parade and later list¬ 
ened to the short speeches in front of Dwight Hall must have been 



25 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 

impressed by the spirit and fire of it all. This afternoon witnesses the 
last practice before the Bulldog meets the Tiger, and it challenges the 
practical application to the spirit so in evidence Wednesday. ^/hen 
the parade forms for the Bowl, it should see those same men in line who 
formed that Wednesday multitude—practically the whole of the Univer¬ 
sity. This march to the Bowl, with everybody taking part, is the final 
proof that we give the team that we are behind them.” 

The editorial of Saturday, November 15th (the day of the Game 
itself) concentrated on cheering and pointed out that the* World War, 
just over, was not won by armies but by nations—by nations with the 
strongest esprit de corps. * Modern Football is indeed a game in which 
whole universities engage,” it said. 

The score that afternoon was: Princeton 13—Yale 6. 

Editorial (Monday morning, November 17th): ‘‘Post Mortem 
—The game is something about which a Yale man would rather not 
talk . . . Those of us who are so constructed mentally as to 

be able to do so prefer to look forward to next Saturday .... 
Exeunt marching—to Boston!” 

Editorial (Wednesday, November 19th): ‘‘The Last Practice 
—It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the undergraduate that the last 
practice of the University Team at the Bowl this afternoon implies an 
obligation—an obligation to the Team in behalf of every man who can 
possibly go out and add his voice to the throng which will be there to 
cheer. Unanimous support of the Team and unanimous confidence in 
its ability to bring back a victory Saturday will be evident this afternoon” 

On Thursday (November 20th) the Nervs apologized for its own 
mistake in regard to 7 he Last Practice—which was secret. A “throng” 
of 400 students had marched to the Bowl to give their “unanimous 
support”—only to be turned away. 

The last bit of reading matter in the Nervs on Friday (November 
21 st) was found buried among the advertisements on the back page: 
“Yale has only been beaten once by both Harvard and Princeton in 
the same year. This was in 1889.” 

For some reason I did not receive the copy of the Nervs for Satur¬ 
day (November 22nd) issued just before the Harvard Game; nor did 
I receive the copy of the Nervs issued after that game on Monday 
(November 24th). If these issues contained some things I was not to 
see or reprint, the authors may rest assured that at present writing (July, 
1923) I have not yet read them. Of course the Sunday edition of a 
Pittsburgh Paper, published between the two issues referred to above, 
informed me as to the score: Harvard 10 7 ale 3. 


26 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


The Yale Daily News itself had little to say about football in the 
issues immediately following, although it quoted the opinions of other 
papers: “All in all Yale impressed me as a team without a soul,” 

'wrote Lawrence Perry in the New York Evening Post after the defeat 
at Cambridge. “The Blue outfit impressed me as the product of a 
house divided against itself: a house in which conflicting notions, cross 
purposes and the like had given to the football world a child of great 
natural aptitude, but spoiled in the bringing up. Or, to change the 
metaphor, it was a great machine with parts not properly assembled. 
For this I am not inclined to hold either Dr. Sharpe or Captain Callahan 
responsible.” 

I should like to ask who should be held responsible if a great team 
is not properly assembled—who if not the coach or the captain? But 
Perry was right in not blaming either Sharpe or Callahan. Perry hit the 
nail on the head not when he “changed the metaphor” but when in the 
very beginning he said the Yale team was “a team without a soul.” 
When a team has no soul, it cannot win no matter how powerful or how 
well-assembled by its captain and its coach. What deprived the Yale 
team of its soul? Many knew—perhaps Lawrence Perry himself also 
knew. But no one wanted to tell. 

The “house divided against itself” was more fully explained in 
another paper which the News did not care to quote, referring to the 
article as “gutter talk.” Under the headline—Internal Strife Among 
The Eli’s—this article went on to say: 

“Funny tales were whispered around Boston about the Yale- 
Harvard Game. Some of the knowing ones said that Yale players had 
to have individual dressing rooms to prevent a riot. But the stories of 
dissension in the Eli’s ranks were branded as ‘bear’ stories. They were 
‘bear stories,’ it has developed. But the bear had real, honest-to-gosh 
claws. Buried under an avalanche of criticism from all sides, Head 
Coach Al. Sharpe has offered to resign. He hinted at a clique between 
the Sheffield contingent and the Academic members of the squad that 
had the team pulling at both ends of the well-known rope. Herb 
Kempton’s friends resented the criticism of the blonde quarter¬ 
back for faulty judgment on the Princeton and Harvard Games. 
They claimed that Kempton called for Braden to hit tackle when 
the ball was on Harvard’s one-yard line and that instead of 
following the signal, the Blue fullback charged into center and 
lost the biggest chance to score. Braden’s friends then joined in 
the feud. The big fullback said they were all wrong from Coach 
Sharpe down, and that if they did not stop making him the 


27 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GBIP 

goat of the affair, he would open up and tell a few interesting things.’’ 

But who wanted to open up and tell a few interesting things?” 

Pei haps the truth as to what was behind all the internal strife was 
best revealed in the two envelopes I had received from New Haven. 
AX^ith each copy of /■* ootball and IVarfare , I had also mailed a copy of 
the handbill with its Suggestions. Two of these handbills were returned 
to me. One came back in a sealed envelope addressed carefully in ink, 
although the writing across the enclosed Suggestions was anonymous: 
“You are a fine Y^ale man j but why don t you come up here and say it 
out loud? The other handbill came in a dirty, open envelope, sloppily 
addressed in pencil to merely: Gundelfinger, Sewickley, Penna.; and 
the following lines were scratched across the enclosed Suggestions: ‘‘I 
suggest that you try Berlin as a field of endeavor. Skunks of your 
stripe are doubtless plentiful there.” (Signed) J. M. Cates. Cates 
was one of Director Sharpe’s assistant football coaches, a graduate of 
the Yale Law School in 1906, and a member of the Yale Alumni 
Advisory Board in 1917, when, as such, he received a copy of Football 
and Warfare before it was suppressed by the Department of Justice. 

It should be noted here that the Freshman Football Team of 1919 
again lost to Harvard as in 191 7—following the distribution of the 
pamphlet. 

The gridiron gloom of 1919 was followed by a winter during which 
the Yale Co-operative Store sold a maximum number of my books— 
showing that undergraduate Yale (and her graduate and professional 
schools also perhaps) was searching for the real cause of Yale’s defeats 
and wondering, perhaps, if they were not an indication that she should 
select her goal and seek her glory in some field other than that one which 
was marked off by five-yard lines. I do not mean to infer by this that 
my books became “best sellers”—nor was I anxious that they should 
become ‘‘best sellers,” which are invariably written and read for the 
purpose of recreation and which not infrequently do good varying in 
amount inversely with the number of copies sold. I wanted my books 
to be read by thinkers. Charles Scribner’s Sons boast that the Princeton 
Co-operative Store sold 96 copies of This Side of Paradise on the very 
day of publication. F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author, is a Princeton 
graduate who (to quote one of his critics) ‘‘if he sees no more in life 
than the spinning dance of midges he portrays with so much skill and 
intelligence, is but a midge himself, with the single added quality of 
being aware of his midgeness and able to describe it.” I do not believe 
that the Yale ‘‘midges” were very strongly attracted by the “odor” of 
rny own books, but I do know that the Yale Co-operative Store sold as 


28 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GBIP 


many of them in the winter of 1919-1920 as the Princeton Co-operative 
Store sold of Fitzgerald’s in one day. It goes without saying that they 
must have been purchased by thinkers rather than “midges” of the rah- 
rah-rah variety. And yet the latter probably borrowed them from the 
thinkers afterwards, instead of buying them with their own cigaret money. 
Books of this sort are, when sold in a college community, read by others 
than those who buy them; they are read also not only by the fellow 
across the hall but by all the fellows in the same entry of the dormitory. 

Another thing which I believe stimulated interest in my books was 
a full-page advertisement of them in the Yale Alumni Weekly in 
October, 1919. The Weekly, as I have pointed out elsewhere, refused 
to advertise my earlier books when they first appeared. I had made this 
fact known on leaflets sent to the undergraduates, and since the latter 
seldom read the graduate paper, I had the full-page from it reprinted 
and circulated in the winter to change the impression which the earlier 
refusal had made. The reprinted page stated that my books “have 
been the stimulus behind and the prophecy before the Great Post-Bellum 
Reconstruction recently voted by the Yale Corporation.” These, of 
course, were the words of an advertisement, but one could hardly con¬ 
ceive of the Yale Alumni Weekly publishing the advertisement if there 
had not been a sense of truth in it; the Weekly , however, still kept its own 
lips sealed as far as any mention of my books was concerned, although 
it boasted of its desire to give publicity to the works of all Yale 
graduates. 

The winter of 1919-1920 again heard all sorts of reforms proposed 
for the athletic world—reforms so radical as to eliminate all gate 
receipts (which at some universities amount to over a million a year for 
football alone) and reforms so conservative as to reduce the distance 
between the goal posts to fourteen feet. (This reduction, by the way, 
refers to the distance between the two goal posts at the same end of 
the field.) 

The Yale system itself underwent a change or two. It was decided 
that Director Sharpe had too big a job for one man, and there came 
with great joy the announcement that “Tad” Jones would return as 
Head Football Coach without remuneration so as to silence the charges 
of professionalism, which had again been resumed and intensified at 
national meetings. Sharpe was to continue “in the direction and 
upbuilding of general Yale athletics for the good of the whole 
student-body—something that many have wanted to see developed 
for many years.” The concentration of Director Sharpe’s ability 
in this one direction should have been a cause for greater rejoicing than 


29 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 

the return of Jones for the sole purpose of winning football victories. 

The Yale News probably realized this when in its issue of Feb¬ 
ruary 23rd, 1920, it commented as follows: 'There is perhaps no 
other single advance which has been made by the University this year 
as striking and as universally interesting as the advance which has been 
made in athletics. The New Department of Athletics, under the leader¬ 
ship of C. W. Mendell with the new Physical Director, Dr. Albert H. 
Sharpe, has worked wonders with its policy of making athletics attractive 
to the average as well as to the exceptional man . . . Through 

the careful improvement and throwing open of all the University’s 
athletic facilities, some twelve hundred of the undergraduate body have 
been able to participate. Through the energetic pursuance of the sane 
policy of rendering athletics not compulsory, but universally attractive, 
the University can now boast of an ideal all but realized: Athletics 
for All.” 

But, at the same time, there was no more loyal slave to tradition in 
those days than this oldest college daily. In spite of its open apprecia¬ 
tion for the new policy, it continued to crave for pigskin ecstasy. It 
announced that spring football practice would start in the “Gym” on 
the first day of March, and added that this was “the earliest start in the 
History of the University;” it announced that fifty school athletes were 
to enter Yale in the fall, and added that twenty-nine of them were 
football players; and when “Tad” Jones sent a letter to the last meeting 
of football men for the year, it ran the following editorial: ‘‘Football 
—The football meeting last night was the opening gun for next fall— 
for next fall and victory. It was not a mere outline of plans with the 
usual exhortations. There was sounded a new note, the return to the 
old football that won games. Little can be added here. ‘Hell and 
Brimstone’ are Tad Jones’ words—words that will put Yale football 
where it ought to be. The eyes of the Yale world are on next year’s 
team. There must be no disappointment.” I can pardon Ted Coy for 
having telegraphed: “Here’s to Tad and a sure Championship Foot¬ 
ball Team!”—for Ted Coy lived back in the days of stars and general 
neglect for the rest of the undergraduate body. But just because the 
News is the oldest college daily was no reason why its editors should 
still have clung to the faulty policy of its childhood. I agreed with the 
News when it said that Tad Jones’ words would put Yale football 
where it ought to be; but I knew the News and I did not have in mind 
the same place. 

Fortunately not all of Yale’s graduates were still making a god of 
pigskin. The waning of the old football-spirit among the alumni was 


30 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GKIP 


evidenced when in February, 1920, the Yale Athletic Association sent 
out a request for contributions “to finish the Bowl”—the seats in the 
upper half having been built only temporary in sand instead of concrete 
when the Bowl was originally constructed. As a special inducement, 
preferred tickets to the big games were offered to these contributors, the 
number of tickets varying with the amount subscribed. The whole 
amount necessary was $250,000. The Committee had to know within 
a month whether to proceed with the work or not. On March 20th, a 
second appeal was mailed, saying that only a little more than half of the 
amount had been subscribed, but that the engineer’s specifications were 
not yet ready and that the time-limit for accepting subscriptions had been 
extended to April 1 st. In August another circular letter was mailed 
saying that the subscribed amount was still $45,000 short of what was 
needed. There was a time when Yale could have collected $250,000 
for football overnight without the offer of preferred tickets or any other 
inducement. 


1920 -1921 

Did the return of “Tad” Jones, Hero of 1916, to command Yale 
football mean that I would have to conduct a propaganda program more 
extensive and intensive than that of previous years? It might have meant 
that; indeed, it would have meant that if “Tad” Jones himself had not 
helped me by writing his “Hell and Brimstone” letter in the spring of 
1920. Such a philosophy would have been very effective before the 
War, and it may have been the foundation for Jones’ triumphs in 1916. 
But it was not the War so much as the War combined with Football and 
Warfare and the Suggestions which made undergraduate Yale averse to 
such victory-“dope” I do not know if Jones knew just why Yale was 
defeated by Princeton and Harvard the year before he returned, but 
if he did know, he certainly made consciously the supreme mistake of 
his career as Coach. When he announced his “Hell and Brimstone” 
philosophy, recalling so vividly the words and advice of the Army 
commander quoted in Football and Warfare, I felt assured that I need 
do nothing further in the way of propaganda to keep the Yale football- 
spirit under suppression as far as seniors, juniors and sophomores were 
concerned—or any others who had read the pamphlet in 1919 and 
been stimulated by it to read my books during the winter. 

The freshmen, of course, were still innocent, and I am of the opinion 




WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


31 


that it was considered loyal to keep them so, however strongly the 
conscience of some upperclassmen dictated the enlightenment of the 
newcomers. It was the first year in which the Freshman classes of both 
the Scientific and the Academic Departments were, in accordance with 
Yale’s Reconstruction Program, united, and I had prepared a special 
New Fraternity circular for this first “Common Freshman Year,” in 
which circular the novel was featured as an attack on venereal diseases 
in a college community. No small number of freshmen ordered the 
book direct, and others were supplied from a consignment I had sent to 
the Yale Co-operative Store. In this way I began my anti-football 
agitation among the freshmen in October, although it was disguised as 
a campaign which was just as necessary and beneficial. 

I had indeed begun my propaganda among some of the freshmen 
before the opening of college by conducting an advertising campaign 
among those students of Yale’s foremost preparatory schools who had 
graduated in June, observing that the circulars were responded to mostly 
by boys who entered Yale a few weeks later. After college opened I 
continued to advertise The New Fraternity among the seniors at these 
preparatory schools, some of whom would enter Yale in 1921. It was 
interesting to note that a surprisingly large response came from Exeter, 
“Tad” Jones’ own preparatory school and the school where he had 
coached so successfully just before coming to New Haven in 1916. 
Exeter continued to send in orders, ranging from one to seven books, 
for several months. 

The circulation of Football and Warfare however was still restricted 
to students who had actually entered Yale, and the time of circulation 
for the freshmen who entered in 1920 was to be reserved for the 
psychological moment. 

In spite of “Tad” Jones’ philosophy, the Yale News showed a 
weakening of spirit in the matter of football. Theie was a sense of 
doubt behind all the editorials, and when they did become fiery, the 
enthusiasm seemed forced: “‘Tad’ Jones will give his best; this spelled 
victory in 1916. The rest is up to the team and the college. For it 
must not be one man who does the work, no, nor yet eleven, but three 
thousand. The less said of last season the better. History is much 
easier to talk about than to make. This is not a year for prophecies— 

nor is it one for disappointment.” . . 

The first game of the year was a decisive Yale victory over Car¬ 
negie Tech 44-0, which some probably considered a good omen, for I 
happened to be instructing at the Carnegie Institute of Technology at 
the time. With the exception of Boston College (who was also Yale s 


32 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


only master in 1919), all the other “pre-season” games resulted in 
victories for the Bulldog, the victory over Brown again immediately 
preceding the game with Princeton. 

The moment for mailing the “yellow” pamphlet had come. Despite 
the fact that Yale had beaten West Virginia 24-0 and that West 
Virginia had already beaten Princeton, despite the fact that a rail)' had 
been advertised and that the /Veil’s demanded that “every man that can 
beg, borrow or steal the carfare will be in Palmer Stadium on Saturday” 
-—despite all this, I felt that the football-spirit of the upperclassmen was 
low enough to prevent a victory over Princeton, irrespective of how the 
freshmen felt. The “low campus morale” of 1919 (after the circula¬ 
tion of the pamphlet) was pointed out by the Yale Alumni Weefylx} in 
November, 1920; and there was no reason to believe that it had under¬ 
gone a rejuvenation to lift it out of the still lower depression due to the 
“Hell and Brimstone” philosophy of Mr. Jones. So it was entirely 
unnecessary to keep the morale low even through the influence of a 
fresh attack on the Freshman spirit. 

But I had another reason for not mailing Football and Warfare 
to the freshmen before the Varsity Game with Princeton. The younger 
team was to play the Harvard freshmen on the same day that the older 
boys played in New Jersey. I was curious to do a little experimenting, 
which, even though unsuccessful, would in no way prevent the defeat of 
Yale at the Palmer Stadium. If successful, it would, in its way, be 
further proof that my pamphlet had brought about the defeat of the 
Freshman Team by Harvard both in 1917 and in 1919. It was suc¬ 
cessful; the pamphlets were not mailed until after the Freshman Game 
with Harvard—a Yale victory 28-3, which gave the Yale freshmen 
the championship. 

This Freshman victory over Harvard served to counteract somewhat 
the effects of the Varsity defeat 20-0 (which was said to be the “Worst 
Drubbing Yale ever suffered from Princeton”) and to give the Yale 
.News sufficient strength to say: “The result of the Princeton Game in 
no way alters the sincerity and earnestness which has characterized the 
University’s support of the team this fall. This week all Yale will 
stand more squarely than ever behind the team.” In the same issue 
with these words there was a large notice requesting all students to eat 
and sing at the Yale Commons “to get the spirit which will beat Har¬ 
vard.” It was on the very morning of this issue that the freshmen 
received their copies of Football and Warfare and the Suggestions; and 
in the following issue, it was announced that the Yale Commons would 
close “from lack of patronage.” This sequence of events, in which 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


33 


Fate seemed to enter so strongly, cannot be fully appreciated unless one 
has read that part of The Nell) Fraternity) which depicts the celebration 
of a football victory in the Yale Dining Hall. In my own undergrad¬ 
uate days, these celebrations were the very thing—in fact the only thing 
—that made Commons so popular. That the Dining Hall should have 
closed just before the Harvard Game looked as though the students, by 
their lack of patronage, foresaw no reason for a celebration. It should 
be observed here, now that this subject is under discussion, that the 
patronage of Commons has wavered all through the “prolonged series 
of athletic defeats.’’ 

Nevertheless there was a rally in Woolsey Hall on Thursday night 
(November 18th), when Coach Jones and Captain Callahan both 
spoke “after the cheer leaders had stopped a five minute ovation’’ and 
after the team was called on the stage by a crowd of 2,000 students. 
The crippled condition of Jones’ men (doubtless a direct outcome of 
his philosophy when put to practice) had been referred to time and 
again in the Weekly) and the News , and, despite the cheering, it was 
probably an outward reflection of the condition of their inner minds. 
“Prophecies,’’ said the News on the morning of the rally, “are not 
popular, and we will not make any; but,’’ continued the ever-hopeful 
paper after swallowing the lump in its throat, “there is a clearly defined 
feeling that the Bowl may yet be the scene of the greatest football game 
of the 1920 season.’’ Then with a faint smile: “And it is rumored 
that even seniors, casting privileges to the winds, will have their hats 
with them.’’ 

When the Harvard team, undefeated, arrived in New Haven on 
Friday, the News ran: “For the first time since 1916 the Bowl will 
rock to the roar of eighty thousand voices acclaiming the appearance 
of the oldest of gridiron rivals.’’ And “Tad” Jones, dreaming of his 
triumph just four years before, said: The team is in excellent shape, 

mentally and physically.’’ (Why consider injuries?) “I expect the 
eleven to come through tomorrow and am absolutely confident of 
victory.’’ 

Saturday Morning, 
November 20th, 1920. 

T. A. D. Jones, Esq., 

Yale Athletic Association, 

New Haven, Conn. 

Dear Sir: 

As I sit here at my desk. New Haven is fast filling with the out-of- 
town fans who have come to see the Yale-Harvard Football Game which 


34 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


marks the close of Yale’s Season. I am not so confident that Yale will 
lose as you and Captain Callahan are that she will win;—but if she 
should win, it would certainly be a most depressing victory—the kind 
that would have been inflicted on the world if Germany had won the 
War. Indeed, your letter to Yale men last spring, reads as though you 
had asked Hindenburg’s advice on how to word it: 

“One thing is certain and you can tell each and every one for me: 
the fellows who make up the Football team next fall will be those who 
are ready to go through hell fire and brimstone for Yale and who are 
willing to make any sacrifice necessary. There will be no petting and 
coddling, and all concerned might just as well make up their minds to it 
now as later. I won’t have a man on the squad who does not place Yale 
first and his pleasures and himself second. I am going to be mighty 
rough on those fellows who don’t come back in the fall ready for the 
toughest season they have ever gone through.’’ 

By a curious coincidence, I opened a pack of a half dozen of my 
books “Ten Years at Yale’’ last night which I had wrapped in news¬ 
paper to keep them clean. The newspaper was dated March 28th, 
1918, and contained the cartoon which I am enclosing. Take a good 
look at it, and don’t forget “the crippled condition of the team’’ this year. 

In the Yale News, I read what you had to say at the “greatest 6f 
rallies’’ in Woolsey Hall on Wednesday night: “I am coming before 
you, not as a coach, but as a Yale man. The team that takes the field 
Saturday wiil fight to its last ounce of strength for you because they are 
Yale men and you are Yale men. . . . Yale expects Victory—de¬ 
mands Victory—demands that every man give his whole to Yale. Not 
only that, but I expect them and you expect them to give more than they 
thought they had because it is a Yale team.... They will come 
through with your support and by giving all they’ve got to Yale.” 
I thought this Deutschland-iiber-alles rot had been squelched; after 
a world war, fought with that intention, it is certainly disgusting to find 
Prussianism again lifting its bloody head under the disguise of “loyalty” 
in one’s Alma Mater, whose students are supposed to be educated men 
and not barbarians. There have been times in the history of the world 
when it was necessary to stimulate loyalty to the n-th power and to 
arouse the emotions of highly educated men; but during those times, 
there was always some great cause at stake. But pray why inflame men 
over a piece of pigskin? If Harvard had committed some awful crime, 
there might be some sense in vanquishing her. But when two groups of 
men meet to play with one another instead of against each other, why 
worry as to which one is going to win? Why hold a special service in 







WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


35 


Wcolsey Hail accompanied by the Newberry Organ in an attempt to 
make the students believe that Yale is God’s chosen university—just as 
the Germans were led to believe that they were God’s chosen people? 
Why have the captain get up and shout: “Many a Yale team has gone 
into a Harvard game without being expected to win and has come 
through because it was for Yale!’’ It is said that the highly successful 
team of Center College kneel on the gridiron and pray before each game; 
but they do not pray for Center—they pray that each man might do his 
best. They have not yet become a team of religious idiots who believe 
they will come through “just because it is for Center.’’ If the Yale 
team could for one moment forget that they are Yale men, they might 
accomplish something. This is Yale’s weak spot not only in football 
but in everything, and unless Yale men everywhere in every undertaking 
give up their damnable pride and brainless “loyalty,” Yale, in spite of 
her recent Reconstruction, will one of these days find herself lying 
prostrate at the side of Germania. 

Trusting you have learned the folly of “militarism on the gridiron,” 
and hoping you will wend your way back to Seattle and spend your 
efforts in some useful employment for the good of Mankind, I am 

Yours very faithfully, 

(signed) George F. Gundelfinger. 

The cartoon referred to was called The Hindenburg Drive , showing 
Hindenburg driving a chariot through an ocean of blood (labelled 
Human Sacrifice) not a chariot conveyed by horses but by a German 
Soldier. The Kaiser stood at the helm throwing out iron crosses. 

sign-post read: To *4 miens I I changed the iron crosses to footban 
Y’s; and I believe I changed the name Amiens to Harvard. 

The letter was mailed to “Tad” Jones before the Harvard Game 
began; but he did not receive it of course until after the 9-0 score of 
Yale’s defeat had been wired all over the country and published in 

all newspapers. , . , 

“Looking into the future,” said the ever-hopeful and ever-disap¬ 
pointed Yale Nervs (Monday morning, Nov. 22nd, 1920), “we cannot 
say there is anything about the season’s defeats to cast a shadow of 
discouragement ahead. The high morale, which has steadily grown 
since September, is here to stay. Victory, postponed in 1920, we 
confidently await in 1921 and thereafter. ... The key to the football 
situation for the future is “Tad” Jones. We express the sentiment of 
the University in stating our unreserved confidence in his ability to win 
back Yale’s football supremacy of the old days.” 




36 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GKIP 


It was decidedly doubtful whether the Nervs was expressing “the 
sentiment of the University”—or even of its own editors—in regard to 
the “season’s defeats.” Had the Nervs said there was nothing about 
the playing of Yale’s team to cast a shadow of discouragement ahead, 
there would have been more truth in the statement. But to have given 
the impression that there was nothing about the “season’s defeats” to 
cast a shadow of discouragement ahead was not in keeping with the 
motto on the Yale seal. In regard to those defeats, 20-0 and 9-0, I 
believe the graduate paper came closer to expressing the sentiment of the 
undergraduate body: “What is Yale going to do?” asked the Alumni 
Weekly. “It seems unthinkable that conditions should be permitted to 
continue that have been true at Yale the last few years. Yale football 
has been sick and seems to be growing worse.” By the conditions that 
have been true at Yale the last few years the Weefyly undoubtedly 
meant the anti-football attitude, falsely called “the high morale” by the 
Yale Daily Nervs; and when the Weekly said that “Yale football has 
been sick and seems to be growing worse,” it meant the Yale football- 
spirit of the undergraduates, which, according to the Nervs , “is here to 
stay.” That Yale football (spirit) seemed to be growing worse was 
reflected in the scores of 1 920 as compared with those in 191 9. It is as 
unfortunate as it is true that the only thing that lives after a football game 
is the score; the untiring efforts of the coach and the brilliant work of 
individual players are, in time, forgotten—only the figures remain to tell 
the story. There may indeed be something in those defeat scores of 
36-0 and 41-0 from Harvard in 1914 and 1913 respectively which 
reflects poor coaching and inferior playing; but the defeat scores of 1 3-6 
and 1 0-3 from Princeton and Harvard respectively in 1919 and those 
of 20-0 and 9-0 from the same universities in 1920 do not indicate 
“sick football growing worse”—they indicate lukewarm football-spirit 
growing cold. The Nervs was only partly right when, in 1919, it said 
that modern football was not played by teams but by whole universities; 
it is true that the last two games on Yale’s schedule are always played 
by whole universities, but the “pre-season” games are played by teams 
alone. If you want a measure of the ability of the Yale team, look at 
the pre-season scores; compare, for example, the number of zeros Yale 
received from other teams in 1915 with the number of teams who 
received zero from Yale in 1919 and in 1 920, and then decide for your¬ 
self if Yale football was sick under Coach Sharpe or under “Tad” 
Jones’ first effort after the War. Sick football naturally changes the 
undergraduate football-spirit, which probably explains the Yale-Harvard 
scores under Coach Hinkey when the whole university was playing the 






WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


37 


game; but it was not sick football that produced the sick football-spirit 
of the whole university in the whole-university games of the first two 
years after the War. It was The New Fraternity and Football and 
IVarfare and the Suggestions . These were the “season’s defeats,’’ 
which, as the News itself later admitted (when it acquired wide-awake 
and truthful rather than optimistic editors) would always “cast a 
shadow of discouragement ahead’’—but discouragement in football only. 

But the Alumni Weekly, however well it knew where the cause lay, 
pretended to seek for it in other directions. It even took a fling at Jones 
himself: The old Yale coaching system was not built up around any 

one man nor was any individual the boss of it.” And the bewildered 
News came to the Coach’s defense by completely ignoring his accom¬ 
plishments in 1916: “With Tad Jones back with time to build up a 
system such as has been utterly lacking since the days of Ted Coy, it 
looks as if ancient football laurels might come back home.’’ The Weekly 
also began to blame the alumni for their ebbing spirit—which was due 
to recent scores, however, rather than to direct circulation of “yellow’’ 
literature. There was a Life Insurance Advertisement in the WeelAy 
in February, 1921, which read: “9 out of every 1,000 men now age 
35 will never hear the results of the next Yale-Harvard Game. Death 
is inevitable. Are you prepared?’’ I believe there were many grad¬ 
uates of that age who were fully prepared and regretted that the 
percentage would be so low. 

Of course some graduates knew, just as all undergraduates knew, the 
truth of the situation which was so mysteriously concealed from the 
Sporting World as a whole. Mr. Stone of the Associated Press, bribed 
by his Yale honorary degree, was probably doing his part to keep it dark, 
and a part of official Yale was no doubt silently applauding his success¬ 
ful efforts in that direction. That a certain element at Yale was still 
craving a “morally degrading and degenerating’’ victory which would 
disprove the influence of my writings, that this element refused to recog¬ 
nize this influence and by so refusing allowed Sporting editors to drag 
Yale teams and coaches through muck and to feed the public at large 
on adulterated and poisoned criticism—this is probably a Yale disgrace 
which the future will be unable to erase. It is little wonder that Calla¬ 
han, who captained the Yale team during both seasons, 1919 and 
1920, falsely bearing the shame of the two most disastrous years in Yale 
football history, left the university before graduating—indeed, quit 
America to study History and Politics at Oxford in January, 1921. 
There was something pathetic—something bordering on mental derange¬ 
ment—when, just before his second chance with Harvard (a chance 


38 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


never given to any other Yale captain), he cried out from the stage of 
Woolsey Hall: “Many a Yale team has gone into a Harvard game 
without being expected to win and has come through because it was 
for Yale!” Without being expected to win! That was the truthful 
accusation he hurled at his hypocritically cheering audience. But as to 
why the audience could not expect them to win—that was the Great 
Secret that no Yale man dared breathe, let alone shout. 

Foreseeing the great consequences, I was proud of the decisive 
defeats which I had, with the assistance of Fate, brought to what was 
promised to be “a new era in Yale football.” I was absolutely willing 
to take all the “blame,” but it hurt me to see the blame on the shoulders 
of innocent men who did not desire or deserve it. It was for this reason 
that I had decided, now that my purpose had been accomplished, to 
enlighten some others who were falsely assuming the credit. When I 
mailed the Football and Warfare pamphlets to the Yale freshmen after 
the Varsity defeat from Princeton in 1920, I also sent a deluge of them 
to the Tiger’s own lair, addressing one to the students in each even- 
numbered room of every dormitory on the Princeton campus. Of course, 
I do not care to claim that no stray copies of this pamphlet had found 
their way to other colleges, but no undergraduate-body other than Yale 
had been saturated with them to a degree that would drown the football- 
spirit and defeat the team. When Princeton did her snake dance at 
the Palmer Stadium on the evening of November 1 3th, 1 920, she was 
quite insane over her 20-0 score, but when she found the “yellow” 
pamphlets in her mail the following week, she no doubt thought her 
dance had been a little too spirited for the occasion; for she must have 
felt less elated when she learned the real cause of her having defeated 
Yale twice in succession; perhaps she, too, could not have won, if her 
morale had been shattered. “Your pamphlet Football and Warfare ,” 
wrote a Princeton undergraduate who was one of the leaders of his 
class, “was enthusiastically received by us all. We witnessed the last 
Yale-Princeton game, and I can only say that our feelings of repugnance 
and horror to the spectacle were equal to those of Paul Milton.” (Paul 
Milton is the name of the main character in The New Fraternity.) The 
story of the further effect on the terrible Tiger will be reserved for 

1921-1922. 

There was a big event which occurred in the spring of 1921 to 
make Yale forget, at least temporarily, her gridiron defeats of the 
preceding fall. It was the announcement of the election of James 
Roland Angell to succeed President Hadley. Athletics, however, 
happened to be one of the main topics in President-elect Angell’s first 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


39 


address before a Yale audience—the Yale News banquet of March 
21 st, 1921: 

I want physical education of the most helpful possible kind for 
every college student, particularly for the non-athlete who is often a bit 
neglected. I want clean, honest intercollegiate athletics, so conducted 
that they not only benefit the men who compete but that they also exercise 
a wholesome influence on the entire academic community. I want them 
so conducted that they do not unreasonably invade the time and attention 
of the members of the team, and, as a consequence, prevent their proper 
attention to academic work. If there are to be professional or semi- 
professional coaches, I want men selected who are not only technically 
expert but who are men of essentially sound, fine character. I would 
rather have a man of questionable character in almost any other Univer¬ 
sity post than in that of athletic coach; for nowhere else is the oppor¬ 
tunity for fundamentally wholesome influence so great and nowhere else 
is the pernicious influence of a coarse or immoral man so serious.” 

It is hardly necessary to call the reader’s attention to the fact that 
the new president’s views on athletics bear a close resemblance to the 
views expressed in Football and Warfare and the Suggestions for the 
Post-Bellum Reconstruction of Yale University. It is true that he said 
nothing that would indicate the abolition of intercollegiate football con¬ 
tests ; but it is equally true that he said nothing in praise of them. A new 
president’s first speech must necessarily be of a conservative nature, 
which may not, however, conform with the nature of the president 
hmself. A better insight of his true nature can sometimes be had from 
an earlier speech made before he was aware of the honor awaiting him, 
even though that speech may have helped him to attain the honor itself. 
In his address as President-elect, Dr. Angell referred lightly to the fact 
that the public press regarded him as a radical in athletics, and as far 
as his paper read before the meetng of the National Collegiate Athletic 
Association in December, 1918, is concerned, the public press would 
seem to be not far wrong. When Dr. Angell told the Yale undergrad¬ 
uates at the News Banquet in March, 1921, that he wanted inter¬ 
collegiate athletics conducted so that they would exercise a wholesome 
influence on the entire academic community, I do not believe that he was 
altogether oblivious of the reference which the News made to his ideas 
in January, 1919. I do not believe, in other words, that by wholesome 
influence, he meant the “wholesome” influence of a prize fight or a 
gladiatorial combat. I do not believe, for example, that he would 
sanction the application of “hell fire and brimstone” when there is no 
great cause at stake—when it is only a question of healthful recreation. 


40 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


“I have no use for the sport, and I have the highest respect for the 
sportsman,” said the president-elect. But these words needed inter¬ 
pretation. 

The fact that “Tad” Jones was retained under President Angell’s 
administration is an endorsement of the Coach’s character, but not neces¬ 
sarily an endorsement of the sport he is coaching or of his method of 
coaching it. Vet in such a war-like sport, “hell fire and brimstone” do 
seem essential for victory. Off the gridiron, “Tad” Jones is just as 
perfect a gentleman as were some of our greatest generals off the field of 
battle. Some time ago I read a letter of “Tad” Jones’ (not addressed 
to me) which proved conclusively that he is a man of character; 
President Angell’s endorsement of him was not necessary for mp enlight¬ 
enment. “The opportunity for fundamentally wholesome influence on 
the entire academic community” is nowhere so great as it is in “Tad” 
Jones. It is only the game of football that is “pernicious, coarse and 
immoral;” and it is only natural that one who coaches such a game 
seemingly takes on these unbecoming colors. 

The two unfortunate things that happened after President-elect 
Angell said that he wanted “physical education of the most helpful 
possible kind for every student, particularly for the non-athlete” were; 
that Dr. Sharpe, who was supplying this very want so efficiently, 
resigned; and that “Tad” Jones, who was the next best man to fill the 
vacancy, continued, instead, to segregate the few athletes who were 
already blessed with physique and health and put them through a season 
of training and playing which crippled their bodies and sent them to 
the Yale infirmary. 


192 1 - 1922 

It would, of course, have been a gigantic and expensive task to 
deluge all universities and colleges with Football and Warfare , as I had 
deluged Princeton. But I was still anxious to inform other institutions of 
learning, in some degree, as to the cause of Yale’s defeats. I decided 
that an effective way to do this would be to deluge the senior classes of 
the preparatory schools which fed the colleges. This was done in the 
spring of 1921, when, for example, a copy of Football and Warfare 
was sent to each room at Exeter that contained a prospective college 
freshman for the fall. A large number of pamphlets were similarly 
sent to Lawrenceville, Hotchkiss and Hill. 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 41 

But this deluge also served a second purpose. Yale was, no doubt, 
observing the element of periodicity in my attacks, and I surmised that 
an attempt was being made to counteract their influence. While there 
may have been no direct statements made, it is very likely that the prom¬ 
inent seniors who were now addressing the Yale freshmen in the early 
fall at meetings in the entries of the various dormitories, were throwing 
out general hints here and there in their talks on Yale spirit and traditions. 
It was wise, therefore, to have had the pamphlet read by the boys before 
going to New Haven. The circulation at the preparatory schools accom¬ 
plished this to some extent and would even serve the purpose for more 
than one year, if one assumed that the pamphlet was also read by upper 
and lower middlers. I realized that this would detract from the freshness 
of the attack immediately preceding the classic games, but I also realized 
that the freshness of attack could not be kept up indefinitely even under 
the most minute precautions. No trick works so effectively as it does 
the first time it is sprung; $nd most tricks do not work at all after the 
secret is divulged. I knew that the maximum momentary and direct 
effect of the circulation of the pamphlet had already been obtained. 
Nevertheless it would probably continue to have an influence and bring 
about eventual and permanent results. I had played my role; the rest 
would be taken care of by other powers and persons with nothing more 
than an occasional suggestion on my part. I did not mail any free 
anti-football literature to Yale in the fall of 1921. 

The “pre-season” of 1921 under Captain Aldrich was even more 
brilliant than that of the preceding year. There was not a single victory 
for the visiting teams, and five of them failed to score a single point. 
Yale ran up 47 points on Brown—the largest score in Yale-Brown 
football history and the largest of that particular Yale season. But the 
defeat of West Point, following an impressive array of all her cadets in 
the Yale Bowl, must have been the event of October. How any one 
could say that Yale football was sick and growing worse was more than 
I could fathom! 

But the Yale News itself was finally learning to differentiate between 
Yale football and Yale football-spirit. After the opening game (Yale 
28—Bates 0), it said, editorially: “Ever since Black’s team was 
carried off the field on the shoulders of howling undergraduates, Yale 
has opened the season with bright prospects, good material and the 
applause of Eastern sporting editors. Two black Novembers attest the 
futility of pre-season triumphs.” One wonders why Yale did not awaken 
to the selfishness and folly of tradition—the tradition of placing the 
so-called classic games at the end of her schedule. Had these contests 



42 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


come earlier in 1919 and 1920 and if the decisive victories over Brown, 
Tufts and Maryland had come (with even higher scores perhaps) at 
the close of the season, the two black Novembers referred to above might 
also have been worthy of the significance of a capital B. But the black 
November of 1920 was very similar to the Black November of 1916; 
the teams had the same coach, and in each case it was really his first year. 
The only difference was the added tradition of 1 920—the two-year-old 
tradition of sick football-spirit. 

From all appearances this tradition was preparing to celebrate its 
third birthday. The above editorial would seem to imply so. But there 
were direct indications also. The Weekly continued its policy of calling 
attention to the low undergraduate morale of the preceding year (which 
it printed in an entirely different garb at that time) : “Last year, football 
was looked upon as a wearisome labor by all concerned.” But in regard 
to the morale of the present: “Everybody appears to be behind Jones 
with a will; if the team does not do credit to ‘him, it will not be the fault 
of the situation in previous years.” And yet, three or four days later, 
the following note appeared in the Yale News: “Due to lack of interest 
shown by the student-body in football practice on Mondays and Tues¬ 
days, the Bowl will be closed for the rest of the season; starting today, 
all practice will be strictly secret.” We even find “Tad” Jones himself 
saying: “It is too early to make prophecies, and talking has never made 
a football team.” Nevertheless football-spirit is just that: Talking. 

One of the advantages of pessimism is that when it does disappoint, 
the disappointment is always a pleasant surprise. And such was the 
Yale victory (13-7) over Princeton on November 12th, 1921. This 
first triumph in classic games since the War transported certain Sporting 
editors as well as those of the Yale publications. 

Grantland Rice, of the New Yorl( Tribune, burst into “poetry:” 

In days of old when Coy was bold 

And Hogan held his sway, 

Etc. 

And then the tide went out. 

Year after year the salty tear 

Has marred the Yale grad’s face. 

Etc. 

But wait! The tide, with blue-flecked stride. 

Is rolling up the glen. 

Where, through with rout, one hears the shout: 

“The Bulldog’s loose again!” 

And his prose embodied the same sentiment: “Jones and his men 





43 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 

at last put the Bulldog back upon the map, where, barring an unkempt 
misfortune, he should stay for some time. . . . Nothing but a miracle 
can save Harvard!” 

It was interesting to watch how the Yale News kept restraining and 
restraining itself and finally had to let go: Earlier it had contradicted 
a New York paper, saying: ‘‘The team is not the greatest since Ted 
Coy. Results talk; two weeks from now, it may be.” And as late as 
Friday (November 18th): ‘‘The miracle has happened once, and it 
may happen again. Victory, however probable, is by no means a fore¬ 
gone conclusion.” But on the morning of the Harvard Game (Novem- 
ver 1 9th) : It would be useless to deny that the undergraduate body 

is completely confident of the ability of the team that takes the field at 
two o’clock. Even a murmur of over-confidence is occasionally heard. 
Such over-confidence is justified, if it ever was, by the performance of 
the team last Saturday.” 

On that same morning, the Literary Digest appeared containing an 
article entitled Football as a “Fighting Game." The opening lines: 
‘‘College football, our greatest fall sport, stirs American blood prin¬ 
cipally because it resembles war. Not only does it appeal to the 
fundamental battle spirit of both young and old, but also its strategy 
and tactics are those of war.” Could anything have been more remin¬ 
iscent of Football and Warfare? And a picture of the Yale Bowl at 
the center of the page! The omen had appeared just before the kick-off. 

And on that morning I also received the Yale Alumni Weekly and 
read: ‘‘Yale has finally emerged from a depressing football slump. It 
is hard to see what is going to stop the 1921 Eleven from emerging 
unbeaten.” 

But it would not have been hard to see why Yale had beaten 
Princeton if the Weekly) had known and confessed the secret, which only 
Princeton and myself knew. And with such knowledge it would not 
have been so hard to see what was going to stop the 1 92 1 Eleven from 
emerging unbeaten. The Literary) Digest had pointed it out at the last 
minute for those who, at the last minute, had not pulled the cap of 
optimism over their eyes. Yale won the Princeton game not because 
the Yale football-spirit had become less sick, but because its sickness was 
a few years staler than that of Princeton. The pamphlet had shown its 
influence in a new manner—that of breaking down the morale of the 
enemy’s spirit. The Princeton team was said to be ‘‘admittedly below 
their usual standard.” Why? Did Yale realize that disarmament was 
the topic of the day at Princeton during the fall? Did Yale realize 
that the big Disarmament Conference was staged at Princeton during 





44 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


the week which ended with the exodus of the Tigers to New Haven? 
If Yale had known that Princeton had been deluged with pamphlets in 
the fall of 1920 after her victory, she would have understood why the 
conference recalled that deluge and served to break down the Princeton 
football-spirit. It is interesting to note that the Yale News in an editorial 
at this time, quotes a Yale senior as asking: “Who are they going to 
disarm? Football players?” And these were just whom the Conference 
was disarming. And what was happening at New Haven? War was, 
on the contrary, again being applauded. Generalissimo Foch was being 
given a degree at a special convocation in Woolsey Hall on the very 
morning of the Yale-Princeton Game, and he marched across the Yale 
Bowl between the halves of the Game itself. All these things had their 
subconscious and conscious influences which helped to bring about, not 
a Yale victory, but a Princeton defeat. 

And the momentary optimism of the Yale News , preceding the 
Yale-Harvard Game, vanished as quickly as it had appeared. After 
the Harvard victory (10-3), the News unknowingly called itself to 
task: “Some irrepressible optimists are already beginning to talk about 
the years to come. Admirable as their attitude may be in the abstract, 
it is a painful and ineffectual remedy for the depression which has seized 
the rest of the University. Oblivious to the future, most of the under¬ 
graduates prefer to remain a while among the desolate ruins of the 
present.” 

And the next day (November 22nd) the News even went so far as 
to predict the celebration of the fourth birthday of Yale’s newest tradi¬ 
tion: sick football-spirit. “Another football season has ended in black 
despair. Other years will come, but the University prefers not to talk 
about them. Next fall the role of the undergraduate will be a silent 
one.” And in the same issue on the opposite page in large black letters: 
“The Bulldog is No Longer the Symbol of Yale”—an advertisement 
for and quotation from an article by Donald Ogden Stewart, a News 
editor of 1916, the Big Year! 

But the Yale News did not remain long “among the desolate ruins.” 
Four days later it published a drawing of the Bowl with a proposed, 
additional balcony, which would increase its seating capacity to 
1 1 7,000. And here as in the last act of The Playboy of the Western 
World when Old Mahon comes in on all fours, one feels like shouting 
with Christy: “Are you coming to be killed a third time, or what ails 
you now?” 

The football season was, as usual, followed by a winter of criticism 
and proposals. Most sensational, however, was that which President 


45 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 

Lowell, referring to the influence of large crowds on athletics, said in his 
Report to the Harvard Overseers in January, 1922: “The necessity of 
maintaining for this purpose public spectacles attended by thousands of 
spectators every Saturday throughout the autumn is certainly not clear; 
and whether it ought to be maintained for any other object is a matter 
worth consideration. Like many other questions touching the direction 
of the undergraduate life, this is one that affects all American colleges, 
and it would be well for faculties, administrators and governing boards 
to consider afresh the proper place of public intercollegiate athletic 
contests in the scheme of education.’’ 

I had mailed a copy of Football and Warfare to each of Harvard’s 
Overseers in 1917, and because there had been considerable change in 
the personnel of the Board, I repeated the act after President Lowell’s 
Report in 1 922. At the same time I sent a hundred or more copies to 
the various undergraduate dormitories and to the editors of the Crimson. 

President Meiklejohn of Amherst, whose views were so radical (too 
radical, I fear) as to sanction abolishing not only the coach but even the 
boards of athletic control (which boards are very essential in the super¬ 
vision of athletics-for-all despite the fact that they insist on getting 
financial support for such from the slaughter-of-the-few as a public 
spectacle), likewise made a sensation at this time, speaking before the 
Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa on Scholarship and Athletics. 

It was rather significant that the University which had the perennially 
victorious football team should be the leader in a winter of radicalism 
along athletic lines of thought. That the academic world (or rather the 
athletic end of it) was greatly alarmed was evidenced by the frequency 
with which its supporters used the word abolition in connection with 
all mention of football. 

“Unless something can be done to denature the great intercollegiate 
sport—football—the scholastic authorities seem likely to declare an 
everlasting prohibition ,” said an editorial in the Yale Nervs; and under 
“Campus Views” in the Yale Alumni Weekly, we find: “The general 
sentiment of the college seems to be against any drastic changes; the big 
games are far too precious for the undergraduates to be willing to see 
them abolished .” Professor Mendell, Chairman of the Yale Board of 
Athletic Control, set forth the corrective: “The statements of President 
Lowell and President Meiklejohn left, unfortunately I think, in the 
minds of the public the impression that it was a question whether football 
should be abolished or not. 

The dailies of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, fearing abolition, 
again called a conference and passed resolutions to influence the action 



46 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


of authorities. The Harvard Crimson even went so far as to suggest 
scrapping Walter Camp’s All-American Team, which is the prime factor 
in keeping football-spirit aglow among American boys. This measure 
did not find its way into the General Resolutions which did, however, 
include the suspension of all practice before the formal opening of col¬ 
lege, the discontinuance of all communication between coach and team 
during the game and the abolition of all so-called intersectional and “big 
games’’ other than the Yale-Harvard-Princeton series. The Yale 
Alumni Weekly became more alarmed over “this sudden fervor for 
drastic reform of undergraduates’’ than it did over the views of the 
presidents, saying that it should be replaced by “more seasoned wisdom’’ 
in order “to prevent changes for which the necessity does not exist.” 

Coach Roper of Princeton objected to the resolution against early 
practice and said that football was too strenuous a game to play without 
sufficient preparation, and if such preparation could not be obtained he 
advocated abolishing the game. “Tad” Jones also had an opinion to 
express: “What the situation requires is an application of some common- 
sense and no “high-brow” legislation; if the game does require such 
legislation, then I would suggest that the game be abolished entirely as a 
menace to the youth of the country.” One would hardly expect “hell 
fire and brimstone” to favor legislation of any kind whatever. Jones 
claimed that the Senior class voted football the favorite sport to watch 
(which does not seem to check up with attendance at the Bowl) and of 
all major sports the favorite to play and that this “may be an argument 
in favor of retaining the present game; or it may be an indication of the 
spirit of the times which leads President Meiklejohn to the conclusion 
that there is work to do in the way of ‘civilizing our country’—a point 
which had better be left without comment by one of the heathen.” 

All these opinions together with the views of certain “self-appointed 
graduate committees” were voiced to guide the action of the presidents 
and representatives of the Big Three at a meeting for the purpose of 
determining some “high-brow” legislation to affect the game. 

In the midst of all this wrangling, it was refreshing to receive a 
circular from the officers of the Yale Alumni University Fund Associa¬ 
tion reproducing an article dealing with “Athletics for Every Boy at 
Yale” and claiming that now “somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy 
per cent of the undergraduates were out for some form of competitive 
sport.” But it was entirely out of keeping with the nature of the circular 
to find a picture of the Yale Bowl at the very head of it—a Bowl in 
which only eleven Yale boys were exhausting and crippling themselves 
and their opponents for the sheer amusement of fifty thousand squatters. 


47 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GKIP 

Toward the end of May, the \ ale News ran an article dealing with 
large stadiums. Despite the fact that the News had earlier announced 
the intention of Ohio State, Illinois, Iowa and others to put up such 
structures, this article reflected the doubt on the part of those men who 
were making donations for these stadiums as to the wisdom of their 
action. The article included the following statements: 

These games for the entertainment and edification of the people are 
not for the good of the universities. I would be glad to see a stop put to 
them and rejoice to see several institutions leading to that end. That 
will bring about a proper sense of proportion of what a university is for. 
Its object is to promote learning. Athletics are drawing the attention of 
students away from this. I am hopeful that the tendency is now the 
other way.” 

These are the words of William Howard Taft, Chief justice of the 
United States Supreme Court—and a member of the Vale Corporation. 


1922 -1 923 

A university or school is perhaps the only place where history repeats 
itself each year. There are, to be sure, variations, but the schedule of 
events is the same. This is, in a large measure, necessary; but adhesion 
to the traditional plays no small part in preventing possible changes which 
might prove to be very beneficial. 

In no other direction is this repetition becoming more monotonous at 
Yale than in that of football, where the variation seems to have been 
reduced to a minimum. Not only the schedule but the sequence and even 
the nature of the scores all seem to be fixed and predestined. (Note the 
Yale-Harvard scores since the War.) It is indeed becoming traditional 
to have four or five “pre-season” victories over teams who are unable 
to score, one game in which the visiting team does score (perhaps ties), 
one in which the visiting team wins, and then the two inevitable defeats 
from Princeton and Harvard respectively. Such was the program again 

in 1922. 

The only unusual feature of the 1922 season was the game 
with Iowa. Yale may have played Iowa for the same reason that 
Princeton may have played Chicago—to work in one intersectional 
game, as an experiment, before the new rules of the Big Three went into 
effect; for there had been a conference during the summer, but the 
“house-cleaning” was not to be effective until the first of January, 1923, 




48 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


and did not therefore affect the gridiron season of 1 922, and for that 
reason need not be discussed in detail here. 

But Yale had another reason for adding the Iowa game to her 
schedule. The western Eleven were being coached by Howard Jones, 
brother of the Yale coach, who had graduated with him in 1 908 from 
Yale, played end when “Tad” played quarterback on the Varsity, and 
had even coached the Yale team which played the last big game in the 
old wooden amphitheatre in 1913. These facts made the Iowa game 
unusually interesting even though it did result in a Yale defeat (6-0) 
in which, however, the News found some consolation because the victors 
from the West had been coached by a man who had learned how to play 
football at the New England college; it was a Yale achievement after all. 

There was also a second game with Carnegie Tech, from which 
institute I had been dismissed the preceding June. The story of my 
dismissal was printed and circulated among undergraduate Yale in the 
fall and stimulated renewed interest in my book The New Fraternity. 

Early in the season, “Tad” Jones softened his attitude toward the 
“high-brow” legislators by removing about a dozen men from the football 
squad for scholastic ineligibility. That the “hell fire and brimstone” 
element had, however, in no way abated was evident from the fact that, 
owing to injuries, six players (including Captain Jordan) were unable 
to participate in the Iowa game; so Jones had defeated Jones in more 
than one sense of the phrase. Injuries had become the bugbear in Yale 
football. 

The fall of 1 922 revealed a complete decay of football-spirit on the 
part of the undergraduates. The Yale News was far from reluctant 
in exposing the fact, and, although there were moments when it had to 
appear otherwise, the News itself was awakening. When one considers 
that its editors were now students who had lived in the Yale community 
for three years under the influence of my books and pamphlets, one 
understands why the editorials had at last become indices for the general 
attitude of the undergraduate body. Thus we find the News talking 
about “knocking the bottom out of extra-curriculum undue emphasis on 
athletics” and giving this advice: “It behooves Yale men to broaden 
their scope of vision beyond the Bowl and the Princeton Stadium.” 

The cheering section is, of course, the best place to look for indica¬ 
tions of decay in football-spirit. The letters written by undergraduates 
and printed in the columns of the daily prove conclusively their indiffer¬ 
ence and apathy. “No cheer leader can perform creditably in the face 
of the listlessness which pervaded the cheering section at the Carnegie 
game.” To this came a response blaming “the pepless leading of the 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


49 


cheer leaders. It was probably a case of “fifty-fifty.” And in another 
letter: The deplorable lack of unity in the Yale cheering section, 

having gained in every minor game this season, was brought to a climax 
last Saturday when open ridicule of the cheer-leaders was manifest in 
the cheering section.” Still another letter referred to the “dearth of 
cheers in the West Point game; and the Alumni Weekly published a 
letter in which the cheer leaders at the final Harvard Game were 
described as “comatose!” 

But the climax, as far as the revelation of the decay of football- 
spirit is concerned, came in the News editorial (November 4th.) : “It 
would almost seem as if football in general should mean enough to every 
undergraduate to influence him to follow the vicissitudes of the team. 
Yet the attendance at the Army game on Saturday last is fairly con¬ 
clusive proof of the pitiful stage to which football has dropped. In a 
quandary and frantically grasping for some effective method by which 
to cope with the situation, the best brains of the Y. A. A. have been 
closeted in their offices night and day—and seven days out of the week.” 
It should be added that the “best brains” then decided to stage a vaude¬ 
ville act on the field between the halves of the next game. But it must 
have been difficult to find an act to excel or even equal the unattracting 
novelty of the drill of Cadets the preceding Saturday, and even if such 
had been found the increased attendance would hardly indicate that 
football-spirit had again come to itself. 

It is little wonder that we find a certain graduate who signs his name 
“Veritas” writing a letter which the News published under the headline 
“Is Yale Spirit Dying?” and in which the undergraduates are advised 
to “Get hot, get fighting mad! Forget yourselves! Pound your neigh¬ 
bor on the back, and fight with the team!” One would think that age 
if not a four-year college course would have helped to civilize this unruly 
alumnus. That a News-editor, however, was temporarily inoculated 
with the madness of this particular son of Eli, was reflected in the editor¬ 
ial before the Princeton game: “Yale Spirit—is that force which will 
drive the Football Team to greater Heights than has been thought 
possible.” Only tw'o hundred undergraduates marched to the station 
to help drive the departing teams to those “Heights,” and three thousand 
students (so the News informs us) marched to the station the following 
week to cheer the returning team for having attained those “Heights:” 
Princeton 3—Yale 0. It is hard to believe that 2800 went to New 
Jersey to actually see the “Heights” being attained. 

“Fate,” said the Yale Alumni Weekly, “would not allow Yale to 
win on Saturday.” The Weekly was at last waking up to the truth. 





50 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


In the time remaining before the Harvard Game some one, under 
the impression that Foch’s march across the Bowl between the halves of 
the 1921 game was the cause of Yale’s victory over Princeton, arranged 
to have Clemenceau do the same thing on November 25th, 1922. When 
the French statesman addressed the Yale students the preceding day at 
the New Haven station (where, just a little while before it seemed, they 
had gone to meet the returning defeated Eleven), he said: “Your name 
alone has prestige enough to win victories.” He meant, of course, the 
name America; and the students surely understood, for they had lost 
faith in that mere name-stuff which “Tad” Jones had tried to make them 
swallow at the rally two years before. And yet that blind faith still 
possessed a few of the graduates, one of whom wrote to the Weekly: 
“Let us wish for victory because it is a Yale team, and for that 
reason alone.” 

There was, of course, another rally—at least it was called a rally. 
It was advertised by a large drawing in the News, showing Harvard 
about to be fed to Moloch. I felt certain that nothing did more to stamp 
the last breath out of Yale’s dying football-spirit than the gruesomeness 
of this cartoon under which President Angell’s name appeared as one of 
the speakers. I do not know what President Angell said at the rally; 
he may not even have been present. But if he was present and did speak, 
his words were probably not worth taking stock in. If President Angell 
had said what he had really wanted to say,—in fact, what he had 
already said earlier elsewhere,— the students would have got up and 
left Woolsey Hall (which was Yale’s regular place of worship on 
Sunday mornings) instead of remaining there to applaud and shout 
falsely for insincerity and hell fire. 

On the night before the Harvard Game, the 1 892 Yale Champion¬ 
ship Team, which had scored 435 points against its opponents without 
being scored upon, sat at a banquet in New York City, at which grace 
may or may not have taken the form of a prayer for victory on the 
following day. Some of the things said at the banquet were sent to the 
Yale Alumni Weekly for publication by Vance C. McCormick, a mem¬ 
ber of the 1892 Team and also one of the few members of the Yale 
Corporation who had acknowledged the receipt of my book The New 
Fraternity. The Weekly could not, unfortunately, publish the views of 
the 1892 Varsity until after the Harvard Game: “It was the opinion of 
the older men at the dinner that if the varsity team cannot go to Yale 
Field and play a practice every afternoon without serious injury to them¬ 
selves, then football ceases to be a sport and is too dangerous a game for 
the youth of our land to play. The rules should be modified or the game 



WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


51 



NEW HAVEN. CONN.. THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 23. 1922. 



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SPECIAL TRAINS FOR SATURDAY 
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PARADE FORMS IN FRONT OF DWIGHT HALL AT 6:35. RE. JORDAN, C. P. LUCKEY, M. P. 
ALDRICH, T. A. D. JONES. AND PRESIDENT ANGELL TO SPEAK. 


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52 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


in its present form given up . . And after all, we again 

reverted to the fact that football is supposed to be a college sport, not a 
gladiatorial spectacle.’ 5 

On the morning of the Game, the News gave a headline only one 
column wide to the event whose announcement had heretofore occupied 
the width of three columns, and at the foot of the page there appeared 
the note: “Campus Football Prohibited by the Dean, due to damage 
done to the grass.’’ Such a notice would hardly serve to arouse Yale’s 
dying football-spirit for the big occasion of that day. Its appearance, 
however, should not be blamed on the tactlessness of the editors, but 
rather praised as a subconscious “error’’ full of significance. 

When the Tiger of France crossed the Bowl between the halves of 
the Game that afternoon, I fear he recalled, not the defeated tiger which 
lay prostrate in the Bowl in November, 1921, but the victorious Tiger 
which had chewed up the Bulldog at the Palmer Stadium just a week 
before: and that he therefore did not look any too good as an omen for 
the final score: Flarvard 10—Yale 3. 

After the Harvard Game I mailed all the pamphlets that I had left 
of the original printing of Football and Warfare There were only 
enough to send one to every third room in the Freshman dormitories at 
New Haven. On Monday morning when the pamphlets arrived, the 
Yale News had printed an editorial which explained, in a confession, 
why I had sent them: “Criticism which emanates from the resultant 
highly-strung sources is to all intents and purposes destructive. This 
type of criticism is distinctly injurious and can have no place in today’s 
problems. It is the psychology resulting from such criticism and from 
the spirit which gives rise to it which is in large part responsible for Yale’s 
continued defeats.’’ 

The Alumni Weekly, commenting on this News editorial, said: 
“The Yale News was right when it said Monday that psychology had 
its part this year. A team that knows it is not supported by the graduates 
is half beaten before it enters a game.” This criticism, the Weekly 
concluded “not only tended to put all Yale men into an attitude of 
disloyalty but actually got into the mental condition of the team itself.’’ 

And the same sentiment was at last expressed by the outside press: 
“When all else is said,’’ claimed the W aterbury American, “the funda¬ 
mental cause of failure this year lay in the poison of criticism and doubt 

* Football and Warfare is now out of print as a pamphlet. It has, 
however, been preserved in combination with two other papers for future 
reference, in more permanent book-form: Essays of Elihu. (See back 
of this booklet.) 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


53 


which was ceaselessly distilled into the minds of coaches and players. 
They were playing for their critics instead of their opponents—an unwise 
and exceedingly human proceeding and one which has proved the 
undoing of individuals far more hard-boiled than these boys in their 
early twenties. Yale dinned into the ears of its really great team: 
“You’re rotten; you can’t win!” And small wonder it is that they 
finally came to believe there must be something in it.” 

Nothing pleased me more than that “these boys in their early 
twenties” had at last been vindicated by the public press and that the 
^ ale team was acknowledged to be “really great” and that it was 
Yale’s football-spirit alone that had pyschologically caused the defeats. 

But why blame the graduates, most of whom based their judgment 
entirely on the scores. Why omit the name of THE graduate whose 
propaganda was at the bottom of it all? Why was not the real culprit 
brought forth for his just share of damnation. There can be but one 
answer: Yale is doubtful. She doubts if he has really done her a 
great harm; she really wonders if he has not done her a great good. So 
she prefers to wait—to wait until the devil gives himself his dues while 
she continues to laud her great disciple of hell fire and brimstone: 
“Yale is absolutely satisfied with what “Tad” Jones is giving to Yale 
Football and to Yale, and she is most sanguine of the future. Accord¬ 
ingly the University is united in earnest support of Jones as the head 
football coach of today and tomorrow.” 

All of which calls to mind what the great Huxley once said: 
“Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly 
and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If you go 
buzzing between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come 
out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistingly 
wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of 
knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.” 

Yale, as I have shown, has been “buzzing between right and wrong” 
for a long time in regard to football, and nothing is going to do more 
to bring about the advent and permanence of right than the complete 
but temporary predominance of wrong. Everybody knows that Yale 
can not find a better football coach than “Tad” Jones. No one has 
ever succeeded more successfully than he in driving “these boys in their 
early twenties” through the pool of human sacrifice and crippling them 
for the attainment (?) of an “honor” which is as asinine as it is worth¬ 
less. Everybody knows that there is no cause at stake in the war on the 
gridiron; the only thing that both sides are fighting for is merely to win 
(intransitive verb). Here as nowhere else perhaps must we treat these 


54 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


two impostors—Triumph and Disaster—just the same. And yet I go 
even a step farther than Mr. Kipling in the way of paradox and claim 
that in foobtall. Disaster itself is Triumph for Yale. 

Why then postpone the Disaster? “Is it college out-door sports 
for their own sake and the good of the undergraduates, and rivalry with 
old opponents for the sake of fine old graduate traditions? Or is it to 
develop to the highest power a sporting spectacle in which our students 
will amuse the public as did the gladiators of old and make a University 
contribution to the gamut of professional and semi-professional sports 
with which our country is healthily supplied now? Which aim do Yale 
graduates wish to see Yale’s?” asks the editor of the Yale Alumni 
Weekly (December 15th, 1922). It would appear at first that the 
editor is here “buzzing between right and wrong” again; but he is not 
—he is merely attempting to postpone Disaster by suggesting a slower 
speed on the wrong road. If the public still craves gladiatorial spec¬ 
tacles (and it is my opinion that this demand is cunningly created far 
more than it is “healthily supplied”), it is certainly not the place of 
educational institutions to gratify that desire. But the sad truth is that 
our “educational” institutions have prostituted college sports—in par¬ 
ticular, football—for this very purpose; and now the editor of the Yale 
Alumni Weekly suggests that football, after having contracted sores 
innumerable and incurable, be brought back to its former status. But 
this is as impossible as football itself is unwilling. In the first place, 
football never was an essential organ of the academic constitution, and 
yet it has grown to the most abnormal dimensions imaginable and is 
filled to the point of bursting with greed and disease germs of every 
description. It is a folly to call conferences each winter—conferences 
of learned doctors—to prescribe treatments for and to massage the game 
with reforms in the hope of bringing it back to a healthful state. The 
passion to keep on expanding for commercial purposes can never be 
wholly suppressed; the only solution is complete amputation—and this 
is the fact against which Yale will eventually knock her head. 

But the editor of the Yale Alumni Weekly (same issue as above) 
should be congratulated on his lecture to that type of graduate “whose 
great and consuming ambition is to see his college’s name at the head of 
the sporting page as the winner in everything from tiddlywinks to rowing, 
and who eats glass if it is the other fellow’s college instead.” And yet 
it seems to me that this self-same editor was at one time more in need of 
such a lecture than are the Yale graduates of today. I am glad to learn 
that he himself has stopped eating glass—for there was indeed some¬ 
thing about his “yearning for a taste of the good old days of brutalizing 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


55 


victories” in 1913 that suggested blood at the mouth. In contrast to 
which I should like to bring to the reader’s attention an event in the 
spring of 1923. Herbert W. Bowen, first chairman of the Yale News 
suggested that money be raised to pay some artist for plans for a bronze 
bulldog and pedestal for the Yale university campus. $130 was to be 
secured from each of the classes from 1872 to 1922, and $350 more 
from the classes now in college, or a total of $8,000. The sum was 
to be awarded to that American artist who provided the best design. 
President Angell was to head the committee formed for placing the 
statue on the campus. It is obvious that the appeal was made to the 
football-spirit of the alumni, the financial appeal being almost negligible. 
The Yale News sent out a circular letter to each of the Academic 
class secretaries. ‘‘Of the twenty-five replies received,” said the News , 
“only two favored the proposal, two refused to commit themselves, and 
twenty-one rejected it in a language varying from careful logic to bitter 
execration and facetiousness.” 

Some of the opinions of secretaries as printed in the News are here¬ 
with reproduced: 

“The erection of such a statue would lend itself immediately to 
ridicule and would offer what I might almost call an uncouth contrast 
to the statue of Nathan Hale which better expresses the Yale Spirit.” 

“I would prefer to collect $150 to keep any such statuary off the 
campus.” 

“It.is idiotic.” 

“I can think of no better way of wasting $8,000 than the scheme 
for erecting a bronze bulldog on the Yale Campus.” 

“As a fetish the bulldog hasn’t worked of late. Brown has her 
bear and Princeton her tiger—but Harvard has gotten on fairly well 
without any kind of animal, and Yale might survive if she had no visible 
reminder of something which hardly deserves permanent recognition.” 

But the unkindest cut of all came in the reply: “If there must be 
a bronze bulldog, lets put it on the Yale Field where, perhaps, some 
kind visiting team might be induced to take it home with them. 

These remarks surely indicate clearly the status of the Yale graduate 
mind as far as football-spirit is concerned, and the fact that the Yale 
News has published them indicates the mental status of its own editorial 
board. And yet the News shouts out hypocritically: “The university 
is united in earnest support of Jones as the head football coach 
of today and tomorrow!” And I, thinking of Huxley’s wisdom, 
shout: “Continue, thou oldest college daily, for the fact against 

which thou art about to knock thy head may serve as a good example 


56 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GBIP 


in making other college dailies as well as thyself straight again.” 

The “wonderful” Yale football-spirit of early days has completely 
evaporated and has been replaced by my Suggestion in athletics for the 
Post-Bellum Reconstruction of Yale University ;, with which I had 
deluged all alumni meetings and banquets immediately after the inaug¬ 
uration of President Angell. Yale football-spirit is dead, and those who 
would try in vain to revive it would do better to sit with Oliver Lodge 
and Conan Doyle. One wonders if this may not have been the reason 
why these two celebrities have lectured at Yale since the War. 

But we should be thankful to know that there are more wholesome 
and more beneficial things than the Bulldog. “Certainly there are more 
men engaged in the twenty-one different branches of sport that the 
Athletic Association now provides for than ever before in the history 
of Yale ” So said John T. Blossom, Director of Athletics and suc¬ 
cessor to Dr. Sharpe, to the Yale graduates on Alumni Day, February, 
1923. It is interesting to note that this athletics-for-all policy was 
born in the year when Yale had no varsity football team whatever, and 
grew to its present dimensions during those years when the varsity football 
teams were the most unsuccessful teams in all Yale football history. 
And yet the Yale Nervs in a conference with the Harvard Crimson and 
the Daily Princetonian resolved in 1919 that successful varsity teams 
were necessary to stimulate a general participation in athletics. As 
far as football is concerned, they were, as I have pointed out, not 
sufficient for that purpose in the past; and now it has been proved that 
neither are they necessary. 

In March, 1923, it was announced that ground had been broken for 
the Lapham Field House, the remarkable feature of which is not its 
proximity to the Yale Bowl and its rooms for the teams that are to be 
mangled therein—but its 1300 lockers and showers and lunch and 
lounge rooms for all undergraduates. 

In concluding the year 1922-1923, nothing could be more appro¬ 
priate than to repeat here some of the things which President Angell 
told the alumni during commencement week. At the Alumni Meeting 
in Battell Chapel: “There has been in the Yale constituency, as I sense 
it, a certain pervasive depression because during the last few years we 
have not had more winning scores in football games with Harvard and 
with Princeton. They have both exhibited a grasping spirit which we 
should not expect in Christian institutions. But there are other sports 
than football and in these we have had the most remarkable record, if 
you wish to judge success by victory. Some of us do not regard that 
as the only criterion, not even the main criterion . . . . We 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


57 


are getting away from the “sideline and bleacher” idea and away from 
the highly trained and specialized team as the only source of athletic 
interest . .1 hope we can get our thoughts off of football at 

times and remember the other significant and equally important consid¬ 
erations in our general student program.” 

At the Alumni Luncheon the president later announced the main 
gift of the year: The Greist Property—seven hundred and fifty acres 
donated by Mrs. Sarah Wey Thompkins “to encourage general partic¬ 
ipation in athletic sports by the students of the University and to provide 
increased facilities for such athletic sports.” 

It is evident that Yale has been the leader among American colleges 
and universities in the Athletics-for-All movement and will continue to 
be the leader in its future development. 


EFFECTS IN GENERAL 

After I published my first book exposing unfortunate conditions at 
Yale, there was considerable talk at the university as to the harm it was 
going to do. But one of my colleagues claimed it would not do Yale 
half so much harm as a defeat from Princeton or Harvard on the 
gridiron. 

Now the fact is that my earlier books did reduce Yale’s enrollment 
—not, however, because they had been widely and intelligently read 
by parents and by high school principals and headmasters, but because 
the newspapers quoted from them my vivid descriptions of Yale’s worst 
features without printing my reasons for publishing such facts or my 
suggestions for amelioration. It took a long time to counteract all this 
notoriety by sending out circular after circular to the preparatory schools 
and their patrons, explaining some of the good things which the books 
had already helped to accomplish. 

Of course one of the more recent things which they have accom¬ 
plished is the decay of Yale football-spirit and the subsequent defeats 
from Princeton and Harvard. And, queer as it may seem, the loss of 
these games has done Yale infinite good; these defeats have not served 
to reduce Yale’s enrollment, but to increase it far beyond the number 
from which it had fallen. The old belief—that Yale flourishes on her 
football victories—has undeniably been proved false. After having 
been beaten by both Princeton and Harvard in two successive years 
after the War, Yale opened the following year (1921-1922) with “the 



58 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


largest freshman class in the history of the university.” And let it be 
understood that these freshmen were not admitted in large quantities 
because the bars had been let down, for Professor Corwin, of the Board 
of Admission, told us that the entrance requirements had never been 
more strictly enforced, and that, in spite of the rigid tests, 528 men 
entered without conditions. The next autumn (1922) Yale had a still 
larger Freshman Class, of whom 700 entered without conditions, the 
percentage breaking the record of the previous year. The total enroll¬ 
ment in the University had increased by 450 over that in 1921-1922. 
The continued growth has made it necessary for the Yale Corporation 
to limit the Freshman enrollment to 850 in the fall of 1923. And all 
this after practically four consecutive years of defeat in football from 
both Princeton and Harvard! 

I have done my best to explain in this booklet that these defeats 
were not due to inferior coaching or playing but to the decay of Yale 
football-spirit on the part of the undergraduates due to my propaganda. 
Nevertheless the public, owing to Yale’s conspiracy of silence, has until 
very recently been given the impression that Yale football itself had 
become “rotten.” (It is no more rotten than all football is rotten.) 
By withholding the secret, Yale was able to attract a scholarly lot of 
freshmen who very likely would not have gone to an institution whose 
rank in football was above its rank in scholarship, and at the same time 
she was able to keep her coaching and playing up to par. It is probable 
that Yale will attract a still better class of students from those who now 
know the whole truth, namely: that gridiron stars, irrespective of their 
magnitude, are no longer regarded as campus kings. 

The question that now arises in the mind of the reader is: What 
happens to the good scholarship element in so large a class when they all 
take up athletics? Before answering this the reader should understand 
clearly the policy of athletics-for-all. In this scheme, victory is only a 
secondary consideration—if considered at all. The finest thing about 
the athletics-for-all movement is that a man, irrespective of whether he 
has lost or won, feels that he has developed his body and improved his 
health; his gain is not measured by the number of points scored but by 
the resultant invigoration which he shares equally with his “opponent.” 
Another fine point of the system, one which is not yet emphasized as 
much as it will be, is that a man has no opponent at all. Only those 
games will be stressed in which one man or one group of men do not 
oppose or hold back another, which is the vicious element in football—or 
at least the element which becomes vicious, not only vicious but injurious 
and even fatal. But in sports like rowing and swimming and all track 



WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


59 


work, one s “opponent” can in no way interfere with one’s own prog¬ 
ress; and this is the ideal that athletics-for-all must eventually strive to 
attain. Until then the element of opposition, in particular where it is 
dangerous, must be reduced to a minimum. Scholars, to be sure, must 
learn to meet mental opposition, but physical resistance is no preparation 
for such. (Imagine a football player on a debating team!) The 
fundamental idea behind athletics-for-all is physical development and 
the resulting improved health of each and every student; it does not 
strive to make athletes of all students and to enlist them in one big game 
of internal competition for the whole university, for that would be more 
disastrous to scholarship than football-spirit itself. 

The next question to be answered is: Does not this physical develop¬ 
ment of all students lead to a physical exuberance, which in itself leads 
to dissipation? If Yale had had gridiron victories during the years 
after the war, the celebration of them, because of the physical condition 
of the undergraduate body as a whole, would probably have been more 
lawless and disastrous than in former years. But Fate saw to it that 
a check was placed on this explosive outlet for stored-up energy. 
(There have indeed been such outlets recently for other reasons.) But 
something more than a check is needed, for a check too closely resembles 
suppression, and suppression, like the element of opposition, is dangerous 
and must be avoided if possible. The solution lies in allowing stored-up 
energy to be used up gradually and continuously rather than suddenly 
and in wasteful quantity. To build up body and health with no further 
end in view is mere animalism. True education demands athletics-for- 
all, but uses it only as a means to an end—and that end is mental 
activity and achievement. The transformation of physical energy into 
mental energy, the body considered as a means of stimulating and a 
foundation for sustaining the mind, the sexual phenomenon of the flesh 
regarded as a symbol for the enlargement of one’s mental horizon—this 
is the prime philosophy of higher education. In cultivating this philosophy 
among Yale undergraduates my efforts have been just as strenuous as 
my campaign against football-spirit. Under such a philosophy, athletics- 
for-all does not interfere with scholarship but encourages it. It was 
reported in December, 1922, that the Yale freshmen stood particularly 
high in their ratings for November (the big football month, by the way), 
and there are indications that interest in things intellectual has increased 
throughout the university. We were told that a series of optional lectures 
on the philosophies of life were very well attended, the lectures, although 
delivered by faculty, having been organized solely by the undergraduates 
themselves. One particular lecture begun in one hall had to be finished 




60 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


in another, owing to the unexpected size of the audience. An increased 
interest in Science is likewise revealed in the large delegations of 
undergraduates at the Sigma Xi and Gamma Alpha lectures. 

But Yale has taken her greatest stride forward in her extra¬ 
curriculum activities of the mind. The old Yale Union, for the purpose 
of debate, has been revived, and the undergraduate body is to be 
divided into two parties, the Conservatives and the Radicals, discuss 
World problems as well as those of the University. Several new 
publications have appeared on the campus, some of them serving 
temporary purposes, others of a more permanent nature to be added to 
Yale’s present list. The presentation of plays has outgrown its former 
limit—the Yale Dramatic Association; the University now supports the 
Playcraftsmen, and even the fraternities are producing Dunsany. 

Particularly noticeable and noteworthy is the undergraduate in¬ 
clination toward creative work in literature and art. The Yale Literary 
Magazine each fall reports more candidates for the Board than its office 
can comfortably accommodate and entertain. The Yale Series of 
Younger Poets, published by the Yale University Press, is attracting 
wide attention. The Playcraftsmen produce only those plays which 
have been written by undergraduates, and some of these have been 
highly praised by professional stagefolk and accepted by prominent 
publishers. 1 he scenery for these plays is likewise designed and painted 
by the students. The new campus publication Elihu also afFords an 
audience for undergraduate art, by publishing drawings of a more 
serious nature than those which appear in the Yale Record. Elihu also 
prints original articles on campus-topics. Note the following from the 
last number issued in 1922-1923: 

“As to athletes, the most curious thing about them is that a man 
who has been a good athlete is considered to have had a successful 
college career on the basis of that alone. A good athlete is satisfied to 
have a dull mind, mediocre marks, and little or no mental ability. It 
makes one doubt if quite so much glory is good for him . . . The 

result is that terrible ‘lost’ feeling some have upon graduating from 
college—unprepared, alas, to drop into oblivion and with nothing to fall 
back on but the past, the good old college days of football and beer¬ 
drinking. I confess I do not see how all this is to be avoided if practical 
measures are not taken to remove some of the jewels from the crown 
of the ‘campus king.’” 

These extra-curriculum creative activities are bringing two classes of 
persons to Yale: those who aspire to become artists and those arrived who 
serve to inspire the incipient. The Yale News now publishes headlines 




WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GKIP 


61 


announcing that men interested in literary and dramatic activities are 
planning to enter Yale in the fall from the various preparatory schools 
(formerly concentrating on prospective football material only) ; and it 
keeps the students well-informed concerning approaching talks and 
recitals by men and women of renown in various fields. The students 
not only flock to these concerts and lectures but also “fall over each 
other in the rush to obtain signatures of the visiting celebrities.” 

There was a time at Yale when such interest in the extra-curriculum 
would have meant neglect of classroom work accompanied by a mad 
rush for tutoring schools in an effort to buy assistance for passing tests 
and examinations. But last year the undergraduate body voted by a 
large majority that tutoring schools were injurious; and the time will no 
doubt come when these parasitic institutions will disappear in New 
Haven. There seems to be something about the right kind of extra¬ 
curriculum activity which encourages scholarship and makes it more 
genuine. President Hadley once said that scholarship would have to 
become an extra-curriculum activity itself before scholarship could 
become a success; I believe it would have been more nearly true to have 
said that the extra-curriculum activity must itself resemble scholarsh:p 
or become more closely related to it. 

So why worry because the Bulldog is losing his grip? In comment¬ 
ing on the last Yale-Harvard Game, a certain Sporting editor said that 
Yale had the power and Harvard the mind; and a certain Yale grad¬ 
uate, after reading this comment, wrote to the Yale Alumni Weekly;: 
“We find in the last line the thing that hurts the alumni of Yale: 
Harvard has the mind. It cuts to the quick, not to see Yale lose, but to 
see the smug complacency of the student body.” This poor, hurt, cut- 
to-the-quick son of Eli may find some relief and consolation in what I 
have written in this section. If he does not care to believe me, I refer 
him to the seemingly more authentic and recent statement of Donald 
Ogden Stewart ( Yale News editor in 1916): “The Bulldog has never 
been distinguished by his mentality, whereas the outstanding feature of 
the Yale of today is, I believe, the intellectual awakening of the stud¬ 
ents.” And if this fails to heal the aching soul of said cut-to-the-quick 
alumnus, let him heed the Harvard Mind itself, as represented by Mr. 
Heywood Broun in the New York World: 

“Personally we have the feeling that football defeats have been 
rather a stimulating thing to the life of Yale University. It seems to us 
that the task of forgeting November misadventures has led the under¬ 
graduate body into seeking escape in a lively interest in books and plays 
and poetry and politics. Give a college an unbroken series of athletic 


62 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


triumphs and all imaginative effort is discouraged. Under such circum¬ 
stances there is no temptation to articulate. The undergraduate feels 
that he has said all he needs to say when he has contributed nine rahs 
and put Team! Team! Team! on the end.” 

If, however, the poor Yale alumnus, because he does not take Mr. 
Broun seriously (for which I cannot altogether blame him), still feels 
no relief, then I offer as a last resort the following from the official 
Harvard Alumni Bulletin: “The half-gods of football victories had to 
be dispelled at Yale before the gods of literature arrived.” 

And now if the pain of his wounded soul has still undergone no 
abatement, he must, I regret to say, continue to endure his ‘‘Hell Fire 
and Brimstone!” 


CONCERNING PROPHETS AND PROPHECIES 

There was once a man who made the prophecy that he would die 
before a certain day and in order to establish his fame as a prophet he 
was forced to commit suicide the night before that day arrived. 

Which goes to show that not all prophecies come to pass without any 
effort on the part of the prophet; and even though the prophet himself 
may do nothing to bring his prophecy to pass, this work is inevitably 
thrown on the shoulders of others, who, however, have the privilege of 
altering the prophecy. 

I have made several prophecies and have had to work (almost 
suicidally) to bring them to pass. In the matter of Yale’s gridiron 
defeats however, I am not the original prophet. The prophecy was 
made by Isaac H. Bromley, Yale ’53. I found it on the very last 
page of Edwards’ book Football Days, which I mentioned earlier and 
then forgot—until now. ‘‘As to the future: We may not expect this 
unbroken round of victories to go on forever; we shall need sometimes, 
more than the inspiration of victory, the discipline of defeat. And it will 
come some day.” But this is the prophecy which I have worked to 
bring to pass and which I took the opportunity to alter: For Yale has 
not lost inspiration with the passing of victory; she has gained inspiration 
as well as discipline from her defeats. 

Yale is now about to open again. The fall of 1923 will see a 
football season under the new rules which became effective on the first 
day of the year. I have made my attitude clear on the matter of foot¬ 
ball, and no set of rules will change it. And yet I make no prophecy 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


63 


for the immediate future—as to the outcome of the November games. 
I am indifferent as to whether Yale loses or wins from the hands of 
Princeton and Harvard. But one thing I do know—and that is that 
Yale football-spirit is dead and is going to stay dead. Even if these 
other institutions should forsake their “grasping spirit” (as President 
Angell puts it)—even if their teams should become so genuinely Chris¬ 
tian and compassionate as to fight less strenuously and actually allow 
Yale to win both games, then I do prophesy there shall be no resurrec¬ 
tion. I do not foresee the return of that which may be annoying so many 
others after four consecutive years of defeat. (Indicated by the fact 
that, as a result of the shameful debauch last spring, eight promising 
but guilty freshmen will be prohibited from playing on the Varsity 
Football Team this fall.) I have no vision of the spectre rising 
from his grave—the spectre whose gray flesh drapes his youthful 
skeleton, his empty eye-sockets lit up with the hellish glare of 
bonfires, his breath stinking with rum, his diseased genitals in the clutch 
of a harlot, howling his dirge of victory to the accompanying din of 
discordant brass, marching across the sacred campus and down to the 
unoffending town to demolish everything within his reach, brainlessly 
defying the Law and spitting his venom into the faces of those whose 
duty it is to uphold it. For this, gentlemen, is Yale football-spirit! And 
who wants to see it above ground again? This, I say, is not Triumph; 
this is Defeat and Disaster at their worst. 

But there is a vision that I do have—not of the immediate but of the 
more distant future: I see the Great Yale Bowl in ruins like the ancient 
amphitheatres of Rome. This huge mass of concrete which a few times 
each autumn bellowed insanely from seventy thousand borrowed mouths 
and which lay mute and deaf, blind, immobile and lifeless for the rest 
of the year, as utterly insensitive to the warm sunshine and clean rains 
and singing zephyrs of springtime as it was to the cold, soiled and silent 
weight of winter’s ice and snow—this marvelous piece of engineering 
constructed not for Yale’s use but as a mere memorial to an inhuman 
gladiatorial sport of a day that will long have passed—this “Bowl of 
Triumph” will also have cracked asunder and crumbled to pieces; and 
the vast stretch of debris will be ignored by all Yale’s first-year men 
forever, and none but her oldest living alumnus will visit it during his 
last reunion and be able to recall it as it stood today. 

And I have a vision of another MEMORIAL: It stands there shel¬ 
tering young men, clean and strong in body and mind, morally whole¬ 
some and unbroken, preparing themselves for the service of peace and 
progress. It is alive every minute of the college year—alive with the 





64 


WHY THE BULLDOG IS LOSING HIS GRIP 


healthful activities, laughter, and throbs of youth. It stands there 
reflecting the light of morning, its upright towers reaching to the opal of 
the heavens, its picturesque archways flooded with New England sunsets 
—and at night the lamp of knowledge and the woodfire of companion¬ 
ship burn in its myriad of windows, while the moon pours her silver over 
its resounding chimes. It stands there ever useful, ever beautiful, ever 
symbolic of learning and virtue. And it has stood there for centuries, 
welcoming the youth of our nation and gilding the memories of other 
men, more advanced in years and wisdom, who once played in its courts 
on the grassy shadows of its hallowed walls and studied in its atmosphere 
of genuine inspiration and worthy achievement. 

These are my prophecies—the prophecies which other men shall 
work to bring to pass. 



JHE NEW FRATERNITY 











THE ABOLITION OF ALL SPORTS WHICH TRANSFORM 
STUDENTS INTO HUNS, BRUTALIZING AND MUTILAT¬ 
ING THEM FOR THE SAKE OF DOMINATION, COM¬ 
MERCIALISM AND PUBLICITY. THE ABOLITION OF 
ALL SPORTS WHICH AIM TO PRODUCE THE ABNOR¬ 
MAL PHYSIQUES OF THOSE SHORT-LIVED FREAKS 
WHO SHOULD BE CONCEALED IN THE SIDE-SHOW 
OF A CIRCUS, RATHER THAN DISPLAYED ON THE 
CAMPUS OF A COLLEGE. THE INTRODUCTION AND 
PERMANENT ESTABLISHMENT OF A NON-MILITARY 
SYSTEM OF ATHLETICS FOE ALL STUDENTS WHICH 
WILL RESULT IN THAT HEALTHFUL PHYSICAL 
DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANE DISCIPLINE WHICH 
ARE NECESSARY TO STIMULATE AND SUSTAIN 
MENTAL ACTIVITY—A SYSTEM WHICH WILL HELP 
BRING ABOUT THE GRADUAL EXPANSION OF THE 
MIND RATHER THAN A SUDDEN CONCUSSION OF 
THE BRAIN. 


From ‘‘Some Suggestions for the Post-Bellum 
Reconstruction of Yale University " 

1918 — 



BOOKS AND BOOKLETS BY 

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Ten Years at Yale 

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The New Fraternity 

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The Great PwElieyer 

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My Dismissal From 

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